


hold on to me

by coffeesuperhero



Category: Leverage
Genre: Cuddling & Snuggling, Eliot Spencer's Cooking, Getting Together, Huddling For Warmth, Multi, Pining, Pre-Relationship, Sharing a Bed, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-07
Updated: 2020-09-03
Packaged: 2021-03-05 19:27:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 23,641
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25760590
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/coffeesuperhero/pseuds/coffeesuperhero
Summary: Five times everybody snuggled, and one time they hugged instead.
Relationships: Alec Hardison & Parker & Eliot Spencer, Alec Hardison/Parker/Eliot Spencer
Comments: 204
Kudos: 395





	1. five more minutes

**Author's Note:**

> So my wife leiascully wrote [this lovely five times fic](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25468261/chapters/61777210), and the last chapter includes a photo of the three of them snuggling as taken by Sophie, and I couldn't get that out of my head, so here we are. 
> 
> Starts sometime in season 1 and will go through season 5 by the time it's done!

Eliot is exhausted. He is exhausted, and a little on edge, because they should have been out of this place already, but their first flight out of this very small town-- which is lucky to have an airport at all, let alone one with two gates-- got canceled for no apparent reason, and there's nothing leaving here until tomorrow. So now they're stuck here for another night at the height of the busy season, which means the place is packed with vacationing families and there are only two hotel rooms and two beds in the whole damn town to split between five cranky, too-tired thieves who have just spent the last two weeks in close quarters. 

Well. Four too-tired thieves, and Nate, who insists he isn't one, despite being _really good at stealing shit_ , but Eliot doesn't particularly care what the guy calls himself as long as he keeps calling the plays right. Even when it means, like today, that in the process Eliot gets thrown down two flights of stairs and maybe-- definitely-- bruised a rib or two doing it. At least everybody else is fine. That's his job. He's good at it. 

But nobody else got thrown down even a single stair, so as soon as they get the keys to these rooms, Eliot grabs one of the cards and navigates himself to a room and collapses face first into the bed there, with no plans to move or speak to anyone for at least six hours. He's almost out when there's noise from the door and movement to his right, and he jolts fully awake to find Hardison climbing in on the other side of the bed, struggling with the blankets as he goes. 

"What the hell, Hardison," he grumbles, tugging on the covers, which Hardison has managed to pull almost entirely off of him. "I was asleep, man!" 

"What does it look like I'm trying to do?" Hardison demands. "You weren't the only one up all night!" 

"No, but I was the only one who got thrown down two flights of stairs," Eliot points out, wrestling Hardison for the duvet, but Hardison holds on tight and glares at him. 

"Listen, man, I am sorry about the stairs, okay? But Nate and Sophie are in the other room arguing about-- I don't even know what, something about the chronological order of the cities they chased each through eight years ago, and _nobody_ is sleeping in there tonight. This is the only quiet room we've got with a bed in it, and I am too damn tall to fall asleep in a chair when there is a perfectly good bed right here." 

"Fine," Eliot growls. He is not thinking about how tall Hardison is. He turns his back to Hardison, but then turns right back around as soon as Hardison gets himself into the bed and under the blankets. "But no talking. And no stealing all the damn covers." 

"The only one talking here is you," Hardison points out, "but you got yourself a deal. Good night." 

Hardison falls asleep before Eliot does, he can tell by the way his breathing changes, long slow breaths that are honestly pretty relaxing. Better than counting sheep, Eliot thinks, and yawns, closes his eyes, and lets himself drift off. 

He's just about sinking into that not-yet-deep-sleep feeling when there's movement again, and not from the part of the bed where Hardison is. His eyes snap open in the half-light to find Parker's face maybe six inches from his, eyes closed and maybe half an inch between her and the edge of the bed.

"Parker, what the _fuck_ ," he mutters. 

"Shh," she says, putting her hand over his mouth. "Sleeping." 

"Don't shush me, you woke _me_ up," Eliot growls, through the cage of her fingers, which she still hasn't moved from his mouth. 

"Well, you _both_ woke me up," Hardison grumbles from the other side of the bed. "Everybody in this bed, shut the hell up." 

"This isn't my fucking fault," Eliot insists, pushing Parker's hands away. "She woke me up." 

"I just want some sleep," Parker groans. "Shut up." 

"You shut up," Eliot says. Is it childish? Yes. Does he care? Maybe, but two flights of stairs and two angry ribs say otherwise. 

"They still arguing over there?" Hardison asks sleepily. 

"Yeah," Parker yawns. Her head is resting on her arms, because she was at least nice enough not to steal his pillow out from under his head, and Eliot tells himself that he does not feel any sympathy for her. "They're up to Rome, I think." 

"Oh good," Hardison says. "Progress." 

"Fuck," says Eliot, and assesses his options. He can try-- and probably fail-- to kick the two of them out of this bed, and when he fails he'll probably just give up and get up and let them sleep here in this perfectly comfortable bed that _he was in first_ while he and his bruised ribs try--and fail-- to sleep in the perfectly _un_ comfortable chair in the corner. Or he could get up and go wander the hotel, gambling on finding and charming his way into the bed of some willing soul who is also here alone, but even if this place wasn't packed to the gills with nothing but families, that idea probably had more legs before the rib situation. Or he could go to the other room and try to sleep through Nate and Sophie's argument, but that's so ridiculous it's hardly even worth thinking about. 

So, maybe, best option, he can give up, give in, and go back to sleep. It's not like it's the first time he's had to share sleeping space with other people, and at least they're his people, and they're probably not going to be interrupted again. The gang's all here who's gonna be here, because if that argument goes like it usually does, there's at least three more cities before Sophie gives up and stalks off in a huff and Nate spends the night drinking alone. 

He looks behind him, sees there's a ton of room between him and Hardison, sighs, and scoots over to give Parker more space. 

"There," he says. "Now you won't fall off the bed and wake me up when you do it." 

"Like I can't fall off a bed silently," Parker huffs, but she takes the extra space she's offered anyway. 

No one wakes him up for the rest of the night, although he wakes himself up at fairly regular intervals, because he's used to sleeping in short bursts, and that's how he's able to document the exact amount of time it takes all of them to migrate slowly towards one another. The first ninety minutes everybody stays pretty still, but after the second ninety, Parker has stolen his pillow entirely and there's a lot less space between him and Hardison. By the time the sun comes up Hardison has his back pressed all the way up against Eliot's, and Parker has abandoned his pillow, which seems to be on the floor, and has settled instead for sleeping on his arm. 

He wants to be irritated by all of this, mostly because if he's irritated about it he doesn't have to deal with the fact that he's not irritated. But they're both pretty warm and if he's honest that's kinda helping those bruised ribs feel a little better. It's not so bad. It's kind of nice, not that he would ever admit it. Any second now he's gonna get up, actually, but five more minutes can't hurt. Just five. He doesn't need any more sleep, but maybe they do. Five minutes. Just to be nice. Sometimes he's nice. Who says he isn't? Well, the guys he threw down the stairs with him, probably. But they had it coming. Still, five minutes won't hurt anybody. He can be nice to Parker and Hardison for five minutes. 

Sophie wakes them all up an hour later, and whatever she thinks about finding the three of them snuggled up against each other like a bunch of fucking kittens, at least she has the grace not to say a word about it.


	2. celebratory oenology

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They stole a country; they earned a little celebration. Wine and a side of snuggling, after San Lorenzo.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Cw: alcohol.

He is back in San Lorenzo. He is back in San Lorenzo, but somehow, nothing bad's happened to him. Which is funny, because Eliot always figured if he ended up back here it would be the end, dragged back to Moreau to suffer for as long as they could keep him alive, and then maybe a little more after, because that's Moreau, and Moreau's people, and he knows it. He knows it, he lived it, and he's spent every day since he left looking over his shoulder, praying today wouldn't be the day and making every plan possible to keep it that way. The last three years, especially, have had him on high alert, because despite his best efforts to the contrary, he finally found something _good_ , and he's managed to hang onto it for three solid years. Made himself a little home and a little family to go with it. And he's been looking over his shoulder more and more since he found them, because he will die before he lets his past or anything chasing him from it run them down, too. 

But it never did. It never did, and now it _won't_ , because tomorrow Eliot Spencer will get on a plane with his people and leave San Lorenzo, but Damien Moreau never will. And it's hard to explain exactly how he feels, knowing that the worst man he's ever met is never going to be able to hurt anybody again. Free, definitely. But that's just him, personally, and what they just did is so much bigger than that. He doesn't know if anybody here really gets that like he does. Probably they don't, not even Nate. And he's glad they don't, really. 

How the hell do you celebrate something this big? If you're Nate and Sophie, apparently, you wander away before the party even really gets started, so in the end it's just him and Parker and Hardison standing around looking at each other. There's no shortage of gorgeous people in San Lorenzo, so he could go find somebody else to spend his time with tonight, but he can do plenty of that in the next two weeks while they're all scattered to the winds and laying low. Tonight is for his team, his family, the only people in the world who could have pulled off what they just pulled off. He is grateful all the way down to his bones for these strange wonderful people who stole a country and somehow, in doing that, stole part of his life back, too. 

Maybe it is because he is free and grateful for it, or because the weather is always perfect in San Lorenzo, or because they have nowhere to be until tomorrow morning, or all of the above, that he finds three bottles of a pretty decent cabernet sauvignon and three glasses to go with it and declares, unequivocally, that they're gonna find a spot outside and get a little drunk. Not too drunk to forget what they're celebrating, not too drunk to even flirt with a hangover, just warm, happy wine drunk. 

The first bottle they drink on the hotel terrace, overlooking the city below. They're quiet, enjoying the wine, enjoying their victory, enjoying each other's company. Some other folks wander onto the terrace, eventually, though, so for the second bottle, they relocate downstairs to the pool just as the sun is setting. In a nearby staff closet he and Hardison find a sign that says _closed for private event_ and, just a little buzzed and laughing the whole time, the two of them haul it over to the door that leads out to the pool. And instead of picking a lock to open something up, this time Parker works her magic to lock the door instead, and just like that they've got the place to themselves. They sit on the edge of the pool and pass the bottle back and forth to fill up their glasses. Eliot even takes off his shoes and rolls up his jeans and puts his feet in the water, because it's the second bottle of wine and the water is perfect and Parker and Hardison are doing it too and _why the fuck not_ , really. This water can't wash all his sins away, but maybe everything they did the past couple of days has him a little more even up, somehow. A little more good. A little less damned. He'll take it. 

"You okay, E?" Hardison asks, and Eliot looks over to find that they're staring at him a little, and he realizes he's probably gone quiet for a few minutes. 

"Yeah, we just-- you know what, we need more wine. Pass me that last bottle," he tells Hardison, holding his hand out, as Parker pours out the last of the second one into her glass. 

By the end of the third bottle, they've moved over to one of these little cabanas, for lack of a better word, that stand around by the sides of the pool. It's just like, basically a pergola with some drapey fabric around the sides and a big old comfortable cushion in the middle of it, but the weather's perfect and the sun has fully set and the stars are out and they are all just pleasantly, happily drunk, stretched out next to each other on this cushion with their shoulders pressed right up together, Eliot and Hardison on the sides and Parker in the middle. 

Eliot can't recall the reason for it but he is holding onto one of the empty wine bottles, and he is just drunk enough now to tell them in more detail than either of them will ever remember about wine, and food and wine pairings, and maybe a little about how he kind of wants to open his own restaurant someday, and how now that Moreau is gone maybe that can be a reality, one of these days, in the distant future. He hasn't ever said any of that out loud before, drunk or sober. But that's okay. These people are weird sometimes but they're his people and he trusts them and they trust him and they also just sort of get him in a way that most other people don't. Maybe that means he's a little weird, too. Maybe right now he's okay with that. 

"What would you call it?" Parker asks. 

"Huh?" Eliot says. 

She pushes her elbow into his side. "Your restaurant." 

"Oh," he says. He blinks. Holds up the wine bottle. The light from above them filters through it and makes funny patterns on Parker's face. He brings it back down to his side and looks over at her. "I don't know. Depends on what it's gonna be. Guess I'll know it when I see it." 

"Hmm," Parker says. She nods, sagely, like she understands completely, and who the fuck knows, maybe she does. Eliot doesn't believe in magic, but he does believe in Parker, which sometimes seems like the same thing. "That makes sense." 

"Thanks, I think," he says, and she reaches up and pats his head. If it weren't for the wine he'd pretend to be annoyed, but he's not annoyed at all, and he's not going to pretend to be anything. He's just glad she feels like she can trust him enough to be here like this. Likes to think he's earned that trust, just a little. 

"Parker," he says, and she turns her head back toward him. "Thanks for-- the other thing, the other day. Not asking." 

Parker just looks at him, wide eyed, very serious, just for a second, then reaches over slowly with one long finger and boops him on the nose. 

Okay, maybe he's not too drunk to be a _little_ annoyed. He waves her hand away. 

"Eliot," Hardison says, distracting him, "Eliot." 

"Yeah?" 

"Do you think if you can teach me enough about the wines I can be the wine guy?" Hardison says. 

"Huh?" 

"Sophie's always the wine guy," Hardison sighs. "Maybe I could be the wine guy."

Parker frowns. "Why isn't Eliot ever the wine guy? He's literally a wine guy." 

"We usually need me for other stuff," Eliot points out, making a fist and holding it up like he's punching the air, but he's smiling, because somebody thinks he's the wine guy instead of just the punchy guy, and that's nice, isn't it. That wine was really nice, too, come to think of it.

"That's what I'm saying," Hardison continues. "What if we need Sophie _and_ Eliot for other stuff too? I could be a good wine guy. All sophisticated, talking about notes and stuff. Eliot, teach me to be a wine guy." 

"Okay," he says, and tries to talk Hardison through the finer points of wine making and tasting and grape varieties and all that, gesturing with the empty wine bottle to emphasize his many points, but several long minutes into that discussion he looks over to see that Hardison's just staring over Parker's head at him like-- honestly? Kind of like Eliot is one of his fancy pieces of computer stuff, and Eliot isn't really sure how to deal with the warm sort of feeling that gives him, so he just decides to chalk it up to the wine and ignore it. "Did you get any of that?" 

"Maybe?" Hardison says. He squeezes his eyes shut and waves his hands around like he's physically trying to pull Eliot's words out of the air. "Tannins and legs and...other stuff." 

"I'm gonna have to explain all that shit to you again when you're sober, huh," Eliot says, looking at Hardison, who is squinting at him with only one eye open.

"I mean, yeah," Hardison says, "but you seem to really like talking about it, man, so that's okay." 

"Yeah," Eliot says, smiling. "I do." 

He will happily explain wine to Hardison anytime, he thinks. He holds the empty wine bottle close to his chest with one arm. It's a good weight, this wine bottle. You could really do some damage with it if you had to. Especially now that the wine is gone and you wouldn't waste it breaking the bottle over somebody's head. That would be a bummer. But the wine is gone, and so is Moreau, and the world is a better place for it. And they did that, together, because they're a team. A really good team. Maybe more than a team. 

"Definitely more than a team," Hardison says, and Eliot realizes that he has said all of that aloud. 

"Yeah," Parker says, smiling. 

"Uh," he says, looking over at them. He scrubs at his face with one hand. "I, huh. Didn't know I said all that." 

"It's okay," Hardison tells him. His smile is really bright in the lights from the pool. Eliot doesn't think he said that out loud, but maybe it would be okay if he had. "We won't tell anyone that wine drunk Eliot is a happy drunk." 

"I am not," he disagrees, but he does it with a smile on his face, so nobody believes him. "Okay. Maybe right now." 

"Right now is pretty good," Hardison agrees. 

"Mmm. The stars are really bright," Parker says, and then she reaches over for Hardison's hand, and then Eliot's, tugging them all in a little closer. 

"Not a bad way to celebrate," he mumbles, after they're both asleep, Hardison's head leaning over on Parker's shoulder and her head resting against Eliot's, all of them still holding hands. He's still cradling this wine bottle in his free arm, but that's fine, too, probably, since he seems to be headed for sleep, right out here in the open, in San Lorenzo of all the fucking places. It shouldn't be this easy to fall asleep like this, especially not here. But the night is warm and so is he and for this moment, at least, everything is just fine, so he closes his eyes and drifts off, free, and grateful, and happy.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> oenology is the study of wine-making, I'm a huge nerd and chapter titles are a struggle, thanks for humoring me


	3. cold hands; warm hearts

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's cold on this mountain, but Eliot stays pretty warm.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Cw: some references to canon-typical violence here and there.

A storm blows up over Mount Kibari before they can get all their gear and get out, because of course it does. As soon as Nate confirms that yes, they are actually camping out up here tonight, Eliot immediately commandeers one of the spare tents, grabs three sleeping bags, and waits, and sure enough, Parker and Hardison are climbing in right behind him a few minutes later. They set up on either side of him, which is kind of a surprise at first, because it's not hard to see that whatever they have between them is finally starting to be something. And he's happy for them. He hopes they figure it out, he just doesn't need to literally be in the middle of it. But he also can't suggest that they move their sleeping arrangements around without calling attention to their whole not-relationship, which neither of them really seem up to doing just yet, so they all just unroll their sleeping bags in silence, lining them up next to each other, Eliot in the middle. 

His arms and quads and most of his back protest mightily as he stretches the sleeping bag out. God, he had forgotten how tiring climbing is. Well, not really forgotten, exactly. Maybe just tried to forget. But it's all coming back now, he thinks, as he gratefully shoves his aching bones inside his sleeping bag. Next to him, Parker does the same, grimacing a little as she goes, and he can tell from the way her face twists up that she must have leaned too hard on a bruise when she shimmied into her sleeping bag. They're both going to be black and blue in a lot of places by morning, if they aren't already, and he tries not to think about how badly that fall into the crevasse could have gone if it had been anyone but the two of them. He was right, before, when he was talking to Parker. It was right that it was the two of them. It was right for so many reasons, but not least because-- him and Parker, they know how to fall. They're used to it. They've had to do it a lot. So they've taught themselves how to fall in ways that let them get back up, Eliot because he's just too damned stubborn to stay down and Parker because it just never occurred to her that a human body is not supposed to fall twenty feet and walk it off.

But they did walk it off today, and now Eliot is tired, and Parker is tired, and as they're zipping up their sleeping bags Hardison keeps looking at both of them sideways like he can't decide if they're real or not. Eliot knows it's coming from a good place, can't imagine what it felt like to be stuck down here with nothing in his head but static and nothing to do about it but wait and hope, but it's still irritating as all get out and he wants it to stop. He did his job, he got Parker there and back again, all in one piece. No sense dwelling on things that didn't happen. 

"Will you please stop looking at us like that?" Eliot says finally.

"Like what?" Hardison asks, fiddling with his own sleeping bag zipper.

"Like we're goddamn ghosts," Eliot snaps. "We're fine." 

"Yeah. I'm definitely not a ghost," Parker says. She reaches over Eliot and pokes Hardison on the arm, hard, through his sleeping bag. "See?" 

"Ow," Hardison says, but then he sighs. "I just-- this was probably the worst trouble we've been in the whole time we've been doing this. And I couldn't do a damn thing for you down here." 

"You know what we do is dangerous," Eliot points out, momentarily grateful that they don't know that this is definitely not the worst trouble any of them have been in. But that secret lies between him and Nate and the Italian and about twenty dead men, and none of them are going to be talking about what Eliot did in that warehouse a few weeks ago. He clears his throat. "Literally last week we took out one of the most dangerous people in the world." 

"Yeah, man, I know that, of course I do," Hardison says. "But that's like, regular dangerous. It's dangerous but it's you, and it's Parker, and I trust y'all to get yourselves out of that kind of shit, because it's what you do. It's what we do. But this?" He waves his hand around. "You can't punch a mountain, Eliot. There's no security system up here for Parker to sneak around on, no tech for me to hack. It's just a big old death trap. And for a little while there I really-- I really thought it got y'all." 

"But it didn't," Parker says simply, and Eliot looks over at her, and she nods at him, and he nods at her, and he looks back at Hardison and points at Parker and says, "What she said." 

Hardison shakes his head. "Yeah, yeah, I know. Never mind, I'm sure y'all are tired. Let's just sleep." 

"Sounds good to me," Parker says. She huddles down and flips up the hood of her sleeping bag, disappearing into it. Hardison gives them both one last look before he does the same, and after a minute Eliot does, too, but the thing with Hardison is still eating at him, so he pushes his face out of the sleeping bag and looks over to his right.

"Hardison," Eliot murmurs. 

His sleeping bag rustles a little. "What?" 

"Listen to me. Mountain or no mountain, you know there was no world where I didn't get her back down here safe, right?" 

"Eliot, I trust you to do your job, we both do, that's not it," Hardison says. He rustles around a little more until Eliot can see his face. His eyes are narrowed a little bit, and he's looking over at Eliot like maybe Eliot's grown an extra head. "You know it wasn't just Parker I was worried about, right?" 

"Uh," Eliot says, and then he doesn't say much else for a second, because it's been a very long time since somebody worried about him just because it was him and not because they needed him to be alive to do his job, and up until now he's been able to just ignore that, but now that Hardison has gone and said it, out loud, where his ears could hear it, he's going to have to think about that some more, probably. "Yeah. Whatever. I'm fine, too, so, let's just get some sleep, okay?" 

"Once again," Hardison says, "you are the one who's still talking to me in this situation, but yeah, okay. Night, man." 

"Night," Eliot says, and settles back in, but he doesn't close his eyes, because he's thinking about Parker a few weeks ago in that park, not asking something she wants to know, just because he asked, and Hardison, now, telling him that it wasn't just Parker he was worried about. And he knows, has known, that they all care about each other. He doesn't think of them as family for nothing, doesn't use that word lightly, ever, even in the privacy of his own mind. It just maybe hadn't fully dawned on him yet that while he was busy planning and plotting to keep them safe because he cares about all of them, that maybe on the other end of things, they'd been busy caring about him, too. About him as a person, not him as a hitter, not as what he is to the team, just as-- Eliot. Like he's enough, on his own, for someone to sit by a radio and worry about. He doesn't know if he believes that about himself anymore, but they sure as hell seem to. That's...well, whatever it is, it ain't nothing. 

"Okay," Hardison's voice comes out of the dark. "Is anybody else just like, really cold?" 

"Me," Parker says. She thrashes around a little. "How is anybody supposed to sleep up here?"

"I mean, I was trying," Eliot complains, even though he wasn't, but it's not like he was about to admit to either of them that he was awake feeling _whatever_ about the fact that they care if he lives or dies. "I'm fine." 

"What do you mean, you're fine?" Hardison demands. "We are on a giant frozen ice cream cone of death and you're fine?" 

"You're not gonna sleep unless you're warmer, are you," Eliot sighs, because he has a feeling he knows where this is heading, and he might as well be the one to suggest it. "You're just gonna talk. All night." 

"Well, at some point my teeth are going to be chattering too much for that," Hardison complains, "but maybe." 

"At least if I'm talking I'm not thinking about how cold I am," Parker says, and Eliot sighs so loudly he would swear it blows back the heavy hood of the sleeping bag a little bit. 

"If either of you ever say a goddamn word to anyone about what I am about to do for you," he says, struggling to sit up and unzip his sleeping bag, then motioning for them to do the same, "you know, I'm not even gonna tell you what I'll do, because I want you to be afraid of it." 

"What are you doing, exactly?" Hardison asks skeptically, but he's also unzipping his sleeping bag, and so is Parker. 

"Give me those," Eliot instructs, reaching for the sleeping bags, and yeah, he was right, they're the kind that all zip together, and it takes him a minute, but he manages to make three sleeping bags into one larger one. "Okay, c'mere," he sighs, when he's done, and he ignores that Parker and Hardison are currently sharing a look like this is Christmas morning, or something, because that's weird. "Get in. I'm warm, I'll keep you warm. Again, if you ever say a goddamn word--" 

"Our lips are sealed," Hardison says, and both of them crowd in next to him without any hesitation at all, which ends up being very, very close, because these sleeping bags are tapered to keep you extra warm, and even though this is now one much larger sleeping bag, it still sort of pushes them all against each other. He's flat on his back and Parker's basically using him as a pillow now, and Hardison's long-ass arms have to go somewhere, so he's got one of them slung across Eliot all the way to Parker, pulling them even closer together, and it's-- _nice_. Maybe it's more than nice, and thinking that being sandwiched between these two people is nice isn't anything he wanted to learn about himself today. Maybe he should have thought this through a little more. Or maybe he thought it through exactly enough, who's to say. 

"This is much better," Parker sighs, and it's something, that's for damn sure. 

"I know, right, oh my god, how are you so warm," Hardison says, burrowing against Eliot's side. 

"I'm warm because I eat actual meals, not cereal and orange soda," Eliot grumbles. "Fat over muscle protects your organs if you happen to, say, get in fights pretty often. Also keeps your dumb ass warm." 

"Is that why you keep feeding us?" Parker asks. Her breath tickles at his neck and her nose is in the part of his hair that's poking out from under his hat and under very different circumstances this would all be fine, but this can't be a thing, so it is not fine. "So we'll be warm?" 

"Something like that," he mutters, because that isn't exactly not the reason he feeds them, is it? 

What the fuck. He should not have suggested that they do this. But here they all are, and the horse is out of the barn. Look, this is fine, he tells himself. They are warm and that is all, they just want to be warm, and they trust him, it's not like they're enjoying this beyond all that. It's not like he wants them to, outside of wanting them to be warm so they'll be quiet and let him sleep. They have a thing, together, that he isn't part of and doesn't need to be, and that's the way it is, so it's fine. 

"Maybe you should feed us more," Parker suggests, rubbing her hands together under the sleeping bag and bringing them up to her mouth to blow warm air on them, "because my hands are still cold." 

"You should have left your damn gloves on, then," he tells her, frowning in her general direction. 

"This seemed warmer," she says. "And if I put my gloves back on now my hands will just stay cold." 

"My hands are cold too," Hardison complains. 

They are being more than a little pathetic, and his main problem with that is that he is probably worse off than they are, because instead of grumbling at Parker again to put her gloves back on and shut up and go the fuck to sleep, he wriggles around until he can reach over for one her hands. 

"Give me your hand," Eliot sighs, holding his out. She frowns, not sure what he's asking for, but she finds his hand anyway. "Fuck, I already hate this." 

"Hate what?" Parker asks, and for an answer, he takes her hand, pushes up his sweater and underlayers, and presses her fingers right up against the warmth of his ribs. 

"Jesus fucking christ," he swears, because even though he knew it was coming, her hand is like five fingers of solid ice against his skin. 

" _Warm_ ," Parker says, sighing happily, and before Eliot can react she has shuffled around and shoved her other hand up under his shirt, too, right next to the other one, god _dammit_.

"That's fucking cold, Parker," he yelps, and he is pretty sure she's smiling, which he's certainly not happy about. At least the cold is a distraction from whatever's happening in his head. 

"Hey, hey," Hardison complains, and Eliot can already tell he's taking his damn gloves off, and he's not even going to do anything about it, is he, he's just going to lay here and make sure their hands are warm, because this is a thing, even though the only people here who are supposed to have a thing are the two people he's lying here between, except that they are currently having some kind of contest to see who can get more of their hands on him, apparently, and again, in a different context, this would be fine. "How come she's the only one who gets to have warm hands? I need my hands, man! What if I get frostbite? Who's gonna do all the hacking and searching and identity work if I can't use my damn hands?" 

"Neither one of you is actually in any danger of getting frostbite in this tent," Eliot grumbles, but he screws his eyes shut, grits his teeth, and reaches over for one of Hardison's hands, once again singing his little protest song of, "I'm only doing this because I'm tired of hearing you complain and I want to get some sleep," which would be a better tune if there were any truth to it at all. Hopefully they're buying it even if he isn't. 

"Oh my god," Hardison says, as more frozen cold radiates from all five of Hardison's fingers across the other side of Eliot's ribs, and then five more besides, when Hardison does exactly what Parker already did and adds his other hand without asking. "Oh my god. So warm." 

"I'm in hell," Eliot mutters, staring at the ceiling of the tent, or what he can see from the small opening of this sleeping bag, anyway. "This is hell. Always thought it would be hotter, somehow, but here we are. Huh." 

"Stop complaining," Parker yawns. One of her hands pats his ribs lightly; the other one finds one of his hands, the one closest to her. 

"Hey, Parker, what the hell?" he asks, as she peels one of his gloves off. 

"I thought your hands might be cold, too," she says simply, and that's all the warning he gets before his admittedly cold palm is pressed up against her stomach, her now-warmer hands wrapped around it. He's distracted enough from that, so he barely notices that Hardison's managed to find his other glove and do the same thing. 

"Hell," Eliot repeats, because his brain is shorting out. Doesn't even have the presence of mind to tell himself he doesn't like what's happening, because the truth is that he doesn't mind it one bit, and _fuck_ , this can't be a thing. It really, really can't. He really, really cannot have it, wouldn't take it, even if they offered. "I'm in hell." 

"Nah, not even a little," Hardison mumbles, basically into the side of Eliot's neck, a fun new sensation that he works very hard not to respond to, and fuck, yeah, this is gonna be a thing he has to work through, huh. Dimly, he wonders if it's too late to run for the hills, but his heart breaks a little at the thought of it, because what other dumbass is gonna lay here and keep their damn hands warm if not him? 

"If everybody's warm enough to shut the fuck up," he grumbles, "can we sleep now?" 

"Way ahead of you," Hardison says, sounding half asleep already, and Parker makes a happy warm sound from where she's nestled against his other side, and they're asleep pretty quick after that, leaving Eliot to his thoughts for many long minutes, until finally, for the second time in less than two weeks, he falls asleep too, right next to these people, holding their hands and wondering what in the hell he's gotten himself into.


	4. situation normal

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Everything is just fine, probably. Post-Grave Danger cuddling. Also Star Wars is on.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Cw for this chapter: references to canon typical violence, anxiety attacks.

There isn't a ton of debriefing after they get back from pulling Hardison out of a goddamn grave, because they just pulled Hardison out of a goddamn grave, but they do still have a few things to deal with, so they go back to Nate's. They ditch the stolen emergency vehicles and grab a cab back, and Eliot sits next to Hardison on the way over, closer than he really needs to, and gratefully counts every single breath Hardison takes.

They work through what's left of this job pretty quick, at least, the parts they can do right now, like getting the money back to their client. The rest of it, like dealing with the guys who nearly killed Hardison, will have to wait until they're close enough to the border to turn in for cocaine smuggling. There is half a second where Eliot quietly thinks about just finding them on his own and saving everyone the trouble, but maybe some of that shows on his face, because Nate points out that this is a chance to take a whole ring of drug smugglers out and let Hardison have a little revenge at the same time, and okay, that's fair enough. He's not really that guy anymore, anyway, or at least he's trying not to be. 

Nate pulls out a bottle of something nice and passes glasses around, and him and Sophie talk nonsense at everybody for a little bit, just to settle everybody's nerves, until slowly they start to peel off, back to whatever passes for their lives when they aren't together. 

He's on his way out after one drink, because Hardison left an hour ago, anyway, and Parker must have slipped out, too, because she's no longer haunting the tall chair right behind Hardison. Eliot assumes that she's gone after him. Good, he thinks. They should be together. 

Nate's voice stops him as he heads for the door. 

"It wasn't your fault, Eliot," Nate says. His voice isn't kind, it's just matter of fact, like he's back at his old gig reading off actuarial tables instead of trying to sell Eliot some horseshit about not blaming himself. 

"What's my job, Nate?" he asks. Nate doesn't say anything, and Eliot just shakes his head. "Yeah. That's what I thought." 

Sophie's murmuring something, but he doesn't catch it, he just lets the door close and tries to figure out what he's doing tonight and heads downstairs to grab some beer he left down there. He is surprised to find that Parker is here, not with Hardison like he figured she was, just sitting alone, mostly in the dark on the corner of the bar. She doesn't look over as he comes around behind the bar to grab the beer, she doesn't look over when he comes back around the bar. He had figured, before he came down here, that his night was going to consist of doing pretty much anything he could to not think about what almost happened today. Now, it looks like he's going to spend it being some kind of relationship whisperer, because if Parker's here that means Hardison's probably sitting home alone, and that won't work, not tonight. 

"Hey," he says, stopping just in front of her. 

"Hey," she says back. She looks at his face, just for a second. Her eyes are a little puffy. She's holding the compass they pulled out of that coffin along with Hardison. 

If she were somebody else, he'd put the beer down, sweep her off the counter, and hold onto her for a long, long time, but it's Parker, and it's him, and he knows better, so he just holds his hand out and tilts his head toward the door and says, "C'mon." 

She takes his hand and slips off the counter. Doesn't ask him where they're going, just trusts him that it's someplace good, and she keeps holding on as she follows him out the door and down the street to his car. 

"You did good, today," he tells her, as he drives them to Hardison's apartment. "Just in case nobody's told you that." 

"Hardison did," she says. She looks out the window while he drives, curls up small with her feet tucked underneath her. The heels of her shoes are digging into his nice leather seats and all he can think to say is, "I should have been there," and a minute later, "I'm sorry, it should have been me, it shouldn't have been him." 

She ought to ask him why he wasn't there, she ought to agree with him that it should have been him in that box and not Hardison, but she doesn't. 

"I don't want anything to happen to you, either," she says. 

"I'm me," he tells her. "Better me than him, or you." 

She makes a frustrated noise. Eliot's watching the road, but he can feel her eyes on him, can hear her thinking, turning whatever she has to get out over in her head until she can find a way to say it that might make sense. He drives, he lets her think. 

"I don't want anything to happen to you, because _you're my friend, too_ , Eliot," she says finally, brows together, nose wrinkled, as serious as can be. 

He thinks that probably means something to her that's bigger than he understands, but he can't really parse it. Because for Eliot, right now, it just sounds a little like forgiveness and a lot like _you matter to me_ , and that's the terrible moment when he knows that he loves them. And yeah, he knew it before, knew it in San Lorenzo, knew it in Alaska, knew it this afternoon in the cemetery with his nose against Hardison's neck, but he could hide from that, write it off as relief. But this is just him, just Parker, and all their love for Hardison between them, and he can't do much to hide from that. He just loves them. There's not a lot he can do about it, either. They don't belong to him like that, so it just kinda is what it is. Sometimes it has been an anchor, holding him here to this life with their team and their work when otherwise he would have just let himself drift out to sea. At the moment it's more like a wound that won't heal. 

They're quiet for the rest of the drive, and Parker holds his hand the whole way to Hardison's apartment door. He answers pretty quick after Eliot rings the bell. 

"Thought maybe you could use some company," Eliot says, holding the beer up in one hand. Parker's still holding on to the other one. Hardison smiles gratefully at him, and warmly at Parker, and steps back to let them in. 

Parker lets go of his hand as soon as they're through the door and heads straight for Hardison's couch, perching on one corner like a little bird. Without Parker to hold onto, Eliot's fingers twitch against his palm, and he shoves his hand into his pocket before he does something with it, like reach for Hardison, pull him close, hold him again for a while. That's not his job and he knows it. It's Parker's, if she can figure out that she wants it. All he has to do is keep them safe for each other, and he came entirely too close to failing at that, today.

There's a lot he would like to say to Hardison, starting with an apology for not being closer to the funeral home when Hardison and Nate went to make that drop. He should have been. He doesn't have a good excuse for why he wasn't, he just _wasn't_. Traffic was bad, Nate didn't know a fucking _drug cartel_ was involved so Eliot wasn't in a fucking hurry. So many reasons, but none of them good enough to actually speak aloud. There wouldn't have been a fucking apology good enough if they hadn't gotten there in time. 

But they did. Nothing to say about it. Hardison probably wouldn't accept an apology even if he tried; he already tried to apologize to Parker and all he got for his trouble was the horrible sinking realization that he's in love with these people. He's not trying that shit again today. And he got his minute to hold onto Hardison this afternoon in that graveyard, so that's that. They got him back. It's done. 

So he goes to the kitchen. He sets the beer on one of the kitchen counters, on the sleek fancy quartz that he knows only sees any kind of real culinary use when Eliot happens to be around, and turns back to the two of them. Parker's still tucked up on the end of the couch, and Hardison is standing in the space between the couch and the kitchen like he's not sure which space he should be in. Typical Hardison. They came over here to comfort him and he's probably standing over there trying to figure out how to help _them_ , because between Eliot and Parker, Hardison is their goddamn beating heart, and God, what a fucking mess.

Eliot just watches them for a minute, thinking, assessing, planning. He isn't exactly sure what either of them need tonight, but whatever it is, he'll do it. Doesn't matter how ridiculous it is, or how much it costs. Financially, emotionally, whatever. 

"Y'all hungry?" Hardison asks suddenly. 

"Maybe," Parker shrugs. She looks at Eliot. So does Hardison. 

"I could eat. You want me to make something?" he asks, but Hardison shakes his head. 

"Nah, I'm ordering like, way too much pizza," Hardison says, pulling out his phone, "and we're watching Star Wars." 

"Alright," Eliot agrees easily, because he'd drive all the way to Mexico and kick the shit out of those guys all over again if Hardison wanted him to, and sitting here watching some weird space ninjas for a few hours seems like way less trouble than that.

But that isn't what Hardison wanted, apparently, because he just stares at Eliot for a second, and then sighs. 

"Okay," Hardison says. "I know today was-- today was bad. But come on. Let's try that again. Star Wars. Marathon. Like, all the movies. We are watching _all_ of Star Wars, Eliot." 

Hardison looks at him like he's waiting for something, and oh, Eliot thinks. Hardison just wants him to-- be himself. Treat him like normal. That's, well, that's fine. He can do that. And if this were a normal day, and Hardison said, "Hey, we're watching Star Wars," Eliot would put up at least a little bit of a fight. 

_Okay, you asshole_ , he thinks, be _normal_. Like you didn't just figure out you're in love with these people on the way over here. 

And honestly, normal is a fucking relief, and he's grateful for the excuse to slip into it, because that's his whole deal, right there: being aggressively fucking normal to cope with all the bad shit that he's done and the weird shit that happens to him. So he makes a face, crosses his arms over his chest, and asks, with as much sneery skepticism as he can summon, "Uh, how many movies is that?" 

" _Six_ ," Hardison says, and looks at Eliot, who looks at Parker, who looks at Hardison, and says, "Even the prequels?" with her nose wrinkled and a frown on her face, like this is just another day at the office, like nobody almost died today. 

"Oh, definitely the prequels," Hardison says, laying it on real thick, and Parker looks a little less upset and Hardison looks a little less uncertain and that's good, so Eliot does his best impersonation of himself when he's pretending to be annoyed. 

"Yeah, okay, I'm out, y'all have a good night watching ten thousand hours of space ninjas," Eliot says, and makes like he's gonna head for the door, just so Hardison can grab his hand as he goes and Parker can protest that if she has to stay, he does too, and after all that he will, eventually, flop down on the couch next to them with really only minimal struggling, because he was always going to stay, would have stayed even if this really were just a normal day, and at this point they probably all know it. 

But it's not exactly a normal day. So maybe he still sits a little closer to Hardison than he should. 

Hardison was in no way joking about ordering entirely too much pizza, which Eliot discovers when the doorbell rings and he gets up to deal with it, because he's on the end of the couch closest to the door and also because he really doesn't care whether or not this moon is a goddamn space station. The pizza guy hands him about twelve boxes and gratefully accepts the absurdly large cash tip Eliot shoves at him, then stops, listens to the music drifting out from the movie in the other room, and says, "May the Force be with you, thanks man!" 

Eliot growls something about being surrounded by nerds and shuts the door with his foot. 

They eat the pizza on the couch, or at least Eliot and Hardison do. Parker commandeers an entire box of those sugary cinnamon breadstick things that pass for dessert options at pizza places and eats the whole thing by herself. She's still sort of a little island to herself way off in the corner of the couch, but Hardison smiles at her, and she smiles back, and Eliot pretends to be busy opening his beer. 

Everything stays pretty normal for a while. There's pizza, there's beer, there's the three of them lined up on the couch, and onscreen there's all the space ninjas with their glowing swords and the not-ninjas with their laser guns. Hardison asks Eliot if his thing for guns applies to blasters. Eliot tells Hardison that laser guns aren't real, so he's not answering this question. They squabble about that for a while. Parker steals his beer in the middle of this discussion. It's good. It's them. It's normal. 

But normal's not always possible. Sometimes the weird shit creeps in and you have to deal with it, especially after things like today. And in Eliot's experience it's never something big, that takes you back to bad places. It's small stuff. A smell. A noise. The way someone holds their pen. 

So he's prepared, sitting here with Hardison, in case there's a little thing that happens to him. Doesn't want it to. Hopes it doesn't. But he's prepared anyway. 

And then onscreen, the space ninjas and not-ninjas jump down a garbage chute or some shit and the walls are closing in, and next to him there is a very subtle but very noticeable change in Hardison. His breathing is faster, his shoulders are up closer to his ears and he's sitting absolutely, completely still. And so is Parker, because she noticed, and she looks at Eliot with wide eyes that are full of questions. 

Eliot carefully stretches his arm out behind Hardison and pushes his hand against his shoulder, just resting his palm flat against the muscle there, firm but gentle, not a lot of contact, just enough. And Hardison relaxes, just a little, takes a deep breath, and then another one, and another. Minutes pass, the people onscreen get out of their trash compactor, and Eliot just waits until Hardison's breaths are back to normal, not deep, not shallow, just regular and even, and only then does he move his hand away. 

Hardison sighs. "Could you just--" Hardison starts to say, looking over at Eliot. "Keep doing that?"

"Yeah," Eliot says, putting his hand back on Hardison's shoulder. "Okay." 

He rests his hand on Hardison's shoulder for a minute, rubbing his thumb back and forth. He can feel the tension there, a big old tight knot under his fingers, so he turns one of his knuckles into it, presses lightly at first, and then a little firmer when Hardison sighs and pushes back into his hand. 

"Are we gonna add massage therapy to your growing list of skills?" Hardison murmurs, after a minute. 

"I mean," Eliot says smugly, digging in a little more, "I dated a masseuse once. I learned a few things." 

"I'm sure you did," Hardison says, looking over at him. He stretches a little bit. "Could you like, do the other shoulder too?" 

Eliot pauses for a second. He did come in here with the idea that he'd do anything they asked. Looks like this is gonna be like Alaska all over again. 

"Okay," Eliot says, dropping his hand away. He sighs. "Turn around." 

"What?" 

"If I'm doing this," he says, holding his hands up, "then I'm not half-assing it, so turn around." 

"If I turn around I can't see the movie," Hardison points out. 

"You've seen the movie ten thousand times," Eliot grouses. "Turn around." 

Hardison's back is broad and well-muscled and he has some pretty immediate regrets about volunteering to put his hands all over the guy, because what the fuck. This is exactly the kind of bullshit he told himself he wasn't gonna do anymore, after Alaska, after waking up in Alaska in a shared sleeping bag with his arms around both of these people like he belonged there, which he doesn't, and he knows that. And yes, today was rough, and he loves them, and he would do anything they asked as a result, but nobody even asked him to do this, not like this. He goddamn volunteered. 

Why is it, he thinks, running his hands over Hardison's back, feeling out the places that need the most work, that every damn time the three of them hang out, it's always like this. Too familiar. Too touchy. Too much of Eliot in spaces that don't feel like they should be his. Too much of Eliot feeling like he's crossing a line that neither of them even seem to know exists. Like, for example, right now, sitting here, with his hands all over somebody else's guy, like Hardison's his and not Parker's, or like earlier, when he showed up here with Parker clinging on to his hand like she had some kind of claim to him, too. It's confusing and it's weird and it just keeps happening. Worst of all, half the time, like now, it seems to be his goddamn idea.

But Hardison seems cool with what's happening, if all his mumbling and relaxed sighs are anything to go by. And Parker-- well, Parker has actually uncurled a little from the ball she was in on the other side of the couch and she's just watching them with this curious, intense look on her face, almost the same as she looks when she's trying to open a safe. And okay, Eliot thinks, maybe that's what he's here for. Maybe he's here to do some of the things Parker can't do yet, because she's trying, but she's just not there. This isn't his; he can't keep it. But he can borrow it for a little while, tonight, if it'll help them out. 

So he gets to work on Hardison's tense muscles, methodically working his way around, trying to let the work itself distract him from the sensation of it, the smooth feel of Hardison's shirt under his fingers, the taut muscle that slowly, slowly unknots under the pressure of his hands. Parker watches them quietly, interestedly, and he gives her what he hopes is a sort of reassuring smile over Hardison's shoulder. 

The movie's almost over by the time he moves back and asks, "Better?" and Hardison mumbles, "Uh huh," and sort of slumps back, half his back pressed up against Eliot's chest. 

His first instinct is to push Hardison away, complain, make some noise about not making it weird, because he's here to be normal, but maybe normal went out the window a while ago, and anyway if he's here to be some kind of proxy for Parker he can't very well push Hardison away. And-- he also just doesn't want to. So he sort of shifts around until he can put his arm up on the back of the couch, around Hardison's shoulders, and he just holds onto him for a while. Parker unwinds herself fully from the corner of the couch and slides over, too, nestling in against Hardison on his other side, her head just a couple of inches from Eliot's fingers where they're resting against Hardison's shoulder. She pulls Hardison's arm around her first, then reaches up behind herself and grabs Eliot's hand, and everybody takes a deep breath at once and lets it out, like she's completed some kind of circuit. And maybe she has. Even he feels better, and he's the odd one out, over here. 

Hardison shifts against both of them a little, and Eliot angles his head to try and see his face, because maybe being sandwiched between people like this isn't that great after the day he's had.

"If you need space," Eliot tells him, "let us know." 

"I'm good," Hardison says. He looks between the two of them and smiles. "No complaints right now." 

"This is nice," Parker adds. Eliot gives her hand a little squeeze. 

Hardison presses a button and the next movie blares to life, disturbing the quiet of the moment. Eliot says, "Dammit, Hardison," and Hardison and Parker laugh, and he smiles, because they can't really see it from this angle, probably. 

The two of them, they're gonna be fine. They'll figure it out. And then there will be less of this warm, comfortable snuggling stuff, probably, but he will be fine, and normal, and Eliot, because that's how it is. There's a lot of different ways to love people. Not all of them have to be up close.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey, listen, I know this one was kind of a bummer? We'll get back to wholesome, angst-free snuggling soon, promise.


	5. where the heart is

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Eliot finds a place in Portland.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> See, this was supposed to be like, a 5k word story that was just cuddling, and what happened was, some plot went and snuck in the back door? There's still some cuddling.

Eliot has always been really, really good at seeing a trap when it's coming, which is why he's still alive. He discovers, when they relocate to Portland, that it's a good thing nobody who's ever been after him thought to build a custom kitchen that looks like he designed it himself, because he walks right into that one, and he does not leave. 

The thing is, he's gonna get his own place, here in Portland. Even though all their aliases are blown, and Hardison has yet to make new ones, it's no big deal. He could talk his way into an apartment without any ID's or whatever, easy, because that "Aw shucks, ma'am," routine works on pretty much anybody, whether he's in Boston or Portland or wherever. He is actually on his way out of the new Leverage space to do that very song and dance when Hardison calls, "Hey, man, before you leave, you have got to come up and check out the kitchen in me and Parker's new place," and what does Eliot do, but abandon his own apartment quest and follow the two of them upstairs, because okay, he's curious about the kitchen. And maybe he missed them a little while he was away. Maybe more than a little. At least he had a nuclear-missile sized distraction. Now he's got nothing. 

But he's gotten pretty good at loving them from arm's length, even maybe sort of worked his way out of it some, sneakily sending Parker that carnivorous plant and casually pushing Hardison a little harder in Parker's direction. It worked out for them. Even Parker can say they're together. And it genuinely does his heart good to see them happy. His main job is always keeping them safe, but happy's a nice bonus. He hasn't ever really gotten to that spot before, and even if it's not his, even if he just occasionally crashes on happy's couch, that's okay. It's more than he thought he'd ever find. He'll find his own place, he'll settle in here. Who knows. Maybe he'll find somebody, too, his own version of whatever happy is. 

But then there's this kitchen, and well. The kitchen is not for Hardison, and it is not for Parker. The kitchen is a goddamn work of art. It's got the same industrial feel that the rest of this place has, all steel beams and exposed brick, miles of counter space, some pretty knives with a deep double well sink. All that's fine, but the real piece de resistance is probably the appliances, which Hardison must have dropped at least a quarter of a million dollars on. The gas range alone probably ran at least seven grand. He runs his fingers over it. It's a professional range with six burners, a griddle, and side-by-side ovens, and he would be lying if he said he isn't already thinking about what he can do with that. He flicks one of the dual burners on. Just to see. It hisses to life instantly, a bright blue ring of possibilities, and he grins. 

"Think that's cool? Check this out," Hardison says, standing next to the big stainless steel fridge. He nudges one of the big steel handles with his elbow, and the door automatically swings open to reveal a fridge that is-- surprisingly well-stocked, and not just with soda. There might even be vegetables in there. Huh. 

Hardison holds up his hands, wiggling his fingers around. "See? No hands. For all your food safety concerns." 

"You listened," Eliot says, a little dazed, because he has tried, over the years, to impart a few life skills to both of them, just in case the day came when he wasn't around or able to make sure they ate something that wasn't out of a box, but he really didn't think any of it sunk in at all. 

"Nobody here's trying to get salmonella," Hardison says, and does a full body shudder, because it's germs, and it's Hardison, so of course he does. 

"You didn't even look at the knives," Parker says. 

"Oh, I looked," Eliot assures her. He reaches behind himself without looking, to the magnetic strip that holds a set of very, very nice set of hand-hammered Japanese steel knives. He pulls the santoku off the strip and flips it around. The handle has to be hand-carved. It has a very good weight to it, well balanced, and sharp as anything. 

"This place is," Eliot says, looking around, holding the knife, "incredible." 

Hardison and Parker exchange their version of Hardison and Eliot's fist bump. 

"But I don't know what you're so proud of," Eliot says. He flips the knife around a couple more times, then puts it back on the magnetic strip. "Neither of you cook." 

"No, but you do," Parker frowns. 

"Yeah, well, I'm not your live-in chef, Parker," Eliot points out, and that's that, he thinks, and he should really get on out the door and figure out where he is actually living. 

But before he can say that and get going, Parker frowns a little deeper at him. 

"No, but you can live _here_ ," she says, slowly, her words measured, like he has showed up very late to his own party, except he didn't know he was throwing one and sure as hell has not received an invitation to anyone else's. "There's a room for you and everything." 

"Just, you know," Hardison says. "Until I get those new aliases done, and you can get your own place. Or not. Whatever, up to you. It's not like we mind having you around." 

"Not like you mind eating actual meals, more like," Eliot grumbles. 

"You don't have to cook a damn thing if you don't want to, man," Hardison says. He spreads his hands. "But there's space here for you. If you want it." 

He looks at them. They look at him. He wonders what the definition of _space_ includes, and how long he can manage to stay here with the two of them before they drive him up the wall with all the loud sex they're probably having. He gives it a week, tops. 

"Okay," he says. "But just until we get those new ID's." 

"Cool," Hardison grins. He and Parker do their fist bump thing again. "The bedrooms are all off the living room. Yours is the one that doesn't have stuff in it." 

"Okay," he says again, and looks at the stove, and the knives, and the fridge, and says, "Well, somebody has to take this place for a test drive, and it might as well be me." 

"Might as well," Hardison agrees. 

"Seems like less fun than real driving," Parker tells him, "but I hope you enjoy it." 

As soon as they disappear back into the living room, he goes right over to the fridge, nudges the handle with his elbow, and grins like a fool when the door swings open, because it is pretty fucking cool. 

Yeah, he thinks, pulling a bunch of vegetables out of the fridge. A week. For this kitchen, he can stay here a week. 

Hardison gets him some new ID's in three days, but by that point they're working on the job for the kid who lost her dad in a plane crash and he can't very well move out then. He's busy. They're busy. And a week later, they're done with the job, and Hardison comes into the kitchen while he's cooking and says he made a few more aliases, just in case, and Eliot smiles and says "Thanks, man," and just gets back to work with the pesto and pasta he's making for dinner. He'll get on that apartment hunt in the morning. Right now, he's up to his elbows in basil and he's got a bunch of delicate sheets of pasta waiting to get dumped in boiling water, and mandilli di saea al pesto waits for no one. 

And then it's two weeks later, and three, and the thing is, he likes it here? 

First things first, it's a nice fucking place. Hardison is big on creature comforts so it's not like Eliot's surprised, but the furniture is perfect, the mattress is exactly as firm as he likes, and the shower in his bathroom has probably been condemned by moral leaders of more than one world religion as sinful for the number of jets and adjustable stuff it has. He loves it. 

And he still loves them. He is doing a bad job of not thinking about that, because he lives here. But he has taken care of them quietly for years, because they needed it and because he needed to do it, wanted to do it, and now that he lives with them he can just sort of give up completely on trying not to. He gets up way earlier than they do, so he has coffee ready for them when they stumble bleary-eyed out of their bedroom, and some kind of breakfast that isn't a hot pocket or a bowl of cereal or a weeks-old protein bar fished out of somebody's jacket pocket. Sometimes he makes them pancakes. Sometimes it's chicken and waffles, or croques madame, or big sloppy breakfast sandwiches. Sometimes it's just bacon and eggs and toast and jam. Once he makes bacon covered in caramelized brown sugar and maple syrup and like, just a hint of dried chile, and Parker devours almost all of it before anybody else really gets any, kisses him soundly on the cheek, so loud it makes a big smacking sound, yells something about him being a genius, then practically vibrates out of the apartment for the meeting about their next job.

"Well, that happened," he says, standing there blinking, holding a spatula. Hardison just laughs, grabs the one piece of bacon Parker hadn't managed to eat, and takes a bite. 

"Mmm. You know," he says, chewing thoughtfully, "I'm gonna have to tell her to kiss you on the other cheek for me later, because this is delicious." 

"Making other people do your work for you, huh," Eliot says, shaking his head, realizing only a half second too late that he has, essentially, implied that Hardison should kiss him his damn self, if he's so inclined. 

"I mean, I'll do it myself, I'm not bothered," Hardison shrugs, eying him carefully, "but death by spatula-wielding cowboy isn't really my preferred way to go out." 

Eliot thinks about it for a second, weighing up what's weirder. Honestly, he decides, the whole thing is just a big weird mess from start to finish. In for a penny, whatever, maybe. He sets the spatula down and raises an eyebrow. 

"Okay, okay," Hardison says appreciatively, and leans over and pecks him on the cheek, real quick and careful. He wrinkles his nose. "Prickly. You need to shave, man." 

"Get the hell out of my kitchen, Hardison," Eliot says, and he doesn't pick up the spatula to slap Hardison on the ass with it as he goes, but he thinks about it. He can hear Hardison laughing to himself all the way down the hall, and it's probably about the kissing, but maybe it's also because he called it his kitchen, because he lives here, and he knows it. He does bring his hand up to scrub at his face, and thinks maybe he does need to shave.

Dammit. He's gonna move out, probably. Nobody could take this nonsense. He didn't even get any damn bacon. 

He does shave, but he doesn't move out. And Parker starts giving him a peck on the cheek every morning when she shuffles in and gratefully accepts her plate of whatever culinary delight he's decided to serve up. Hardison doesn't do that, but Eliot does get a lot of warm, sleepy smiles, which feels kind of the same, if he's honest, so this is still a thing. 

He hasn't made The Bacon again, though. He's a little concerned at this point that if he does someone will kiss him for real, which wouldn't be a problem, except that he's not part of this relationship.

Then again, they go on weird dates all the time but they always tell him that they're going, and not all the time, but sometimes, it seems like he's also invited. But that's probably just Parker not knowing how relationships work. Except that Hardison never course-corrects when she offers or even gives Eliot a funny look about it at all, and sometimes it's Hardison doing the offering. He doesn't take them up on it, because he's not dating them, nobody has asked him to do that, and nobody should. He's just their-- roommate? Their friend? Their Eliot, maybe. He's just the guy who lives here and sits very close to or sometimes between them on movie night, because if he tries to give them space someone will either flop over on him or pull him closer. He's just the guy who lives here and isn't really seeing other people, lately, and it's not just because they own this bar and he feels weird picking people up in it. He's just the guy who lives here and cooks for them not out of obligation but out of love and also necessity, because he has to eat, too, and it might as well be good food. 

And he is making a lot of good food, for them, and for the brewpub, which he's gonna turn into a gastropub, whether or not Hardison is cool with it. He's actually in the middle of doing some experimenting downstairs with the menu when Toby comes in, and then that's his whole day done. He drops everything, because when the guy who saved you from yourself shows up with a black eye and a sob story, you stop, too. And so does the team, which is good, because he would have done this solo but he knows it's better when it's all of them. 

But it means he doesn't have time to teach Parker about good food, when she asks. He's about to be in the middle of lunch service at the brewpub, for one thing, and he's got the job for Toby, for another. But there is Parker, sitting at the corner of his bar, looking like she's lost and he's her compass, and well, shit. 

"Teach me to like stuff," she says, and he holds onto his whisk a little tighter than he needs to, because if he sets this down and reaches for her instead he will never get shit prepped for lunch in time. 

He does try to tell her that he doesn't have time. It's about to be lunch rush. They've got a job. But there's Parker in the middle of it all, and she's counting on him, too, so here they are, one Eliot, one Parker, and a lot of other shit that he has to do in the way. And Eliot generally likes to deal with competing priorities methodically, the same way he deals with threat elimination, in descending order of importance and time. So the way this should go is: the lunch rush, the job, Parker's weird bullshit. But he looks at Parker's face and knows that what she's asking isn't about liking stuff, what she's asking is about feeling stuff, and the problem with that is that it makes him feel a lot of stuff, so the way this is gonna go is: Parker's weird bullshit, the lunch rush, the job.

"All right," he says. "Give me a second. Let me get everybody situated and the restaurant open for lunch and we'll talk." 

"Thanks," she says quietly. 

And then the doors are open and people start trickling in, and he's pouring beer and making food for other people for a while, but every time he passes the bar where she's waiting he thinks about what he could possibly put on a plate that would help her out. The thing is, everything he's ever made for her, for Hardison, for any of them, really, just says _I love you, I love you, I love you_ , over and over, whether they hear it or not, because that's what food is, to him, when you make it for family. Love. It's love, and for this particular little family it's also a silent _thank you_ , because for some reason they chose him and keep choosing him and don't seem like they have any plans to stop. All the things he doesn't always believe he deserves, that's what he feels when he cooks for them, and he leaves it all on the plates he sets in front of them. Love, gratitude, comfort, warmth, joy. And if she doesn't get the feeling of that from what he feeds her by now, after a month's worth of breakfasts and lunches and dinners, he's not really sure what he can do or say to help out. But it's Parker, so he'll try. 

Parker's still on her perch when he finally comes back with a plate of food, sets it in front of her, and tells her about feelings and art. She eats. He talks. She talks. He listens. He does not tell her that he loves her, except with the food on the plate. Whether or not she gets it is anybody's guess, but later that night when they need a food critic he doesn't waste a second before vouching for her, because she's trying, and maybe that's enough. 

And then he puts bone broth in the salsa verde, and Parker feels something and that's definitely enough.

With Parker off somewhere in the world discovering that she likes things for most of a week after they get Toby his culinary school back, the team gets some down time. Eliot happily splits his time between the school, the brewpub, and their couch, where he gets his ass absolutely handed to him in pretty much every video game Hardison owns. 

"Aw, come on," Eliot says, as Hardison smokes him yet again on this racing game. 

"That's what I'm talking about!" Hardison yells, literally pumping his fist in the air and making a lot of obnoxious noise about how great he is. 

"This is only because it's a video game, man, if these were real cars," Eliot grumbles, "you'd still be trying to get the damn key in the ignition, and I'd be all the way to Canada already." 

"Sorry, what was that?" Hardison cups his hand around one ear. "I don't speak sore loser, you'll have to say that again--" 

"Dammit, Hardison," Eliot says, pointing at the tv, "I'll show you a sore loser, start that shit over." 

"Oh, you want a rematch? Okay, okay," Hardison says, pressing some buttons. "We can do that." 

They hear the door open just before the menu loads up, and both of them turn around to find Parker, yawning as she steps into the apartment. 

"Hey. You used the door," Eliot says, surprised. 

She smiles at him and yawns again. "I fell asleep on the ladder outside," she admits, and then comes over to kiss Hardison. Eliot stares at the screen and doesn't think about kissing anybody. 

"Hey," he hears Hardison say, so softly, and he doesn't think about that, either. Fortunately, Hardison interrupts what he's not thinking about by saying, louder, "You are just in time to watch me kick Eliot's ass at this game for the fifteenth time." 

"It hasn't been fifteen," Eliot grumbles. 

"It has," Hardison tells her, but then his phone rings and he can't gloat anymore. He peers at the screen. "Aw, damn. This is Nate, I gotta take it." He stands up and points at Eliot and then at the television. "Don't go anywhere. I want that rematch." 

"Yeah, yeah," Eliot says, and Parker drops down onto the couch beside him. "How was your trip? Eat anything good?" 

"A lot of things," she says, and flops over on him, not quite in his lap but not quite out of it, her head pillowed on his chest and her arms around him. 

"You just don't have any concept of personal space anymore, huh," Eliot says. Not like he does, either, since he's not exactly pushing her off. 

"Not when it's us," she says, waving her hand around at the two of them, at the space that will include Hardison again when he comes back from his phone call. Parker frowns up at him. "Do you want me to move?" 

He should say yes, but he never does. "No, you're fine," he sighs. It's not that he minds having her here, anyway, and Hardison always seems completely unphased by it. "Tell me about the food." 

"I made a list," she says, trying to fish in her pocket. 

"Not from the list," he says. "Just tell me what you remember." 

"Okay," she says thoughtfully. "Mm. Gelato." 

She would start with dessert. "Okay," he says, smiling. "What kind?" 

"A lot," she says, and he bets there was. He wonders if the gelateria is still in business, or if she bought up their whole stock and they've retired. "Chocolate. Mint," she recalls. "And lemon. Actually, I liked that one the most." 

He closes his eyes and thinks about lemon zest. "What did it taste like?" 

"Sharp," she says. "Bright. Cold. Like stealing the Polar Star." 

He shakes his head, but he's laughing a little. "Sounds good," he says. "What else?" 

"Pizza," she says. "The one you said wasn't actually a drink." 

"Margherita," he smiles. 

"That's the one," she says. "It was...sweet? Not like cake, or chocolate, just-- I don't know. Sweet, and warm, and salty." 

"The sweetness is from the tomatoes," he tells her. "And a little from the cheese. What did that make you think of stealing?" 

"Hmm. Nothing," she says. "It reminded me of drinking wine. In San Lorenzo, that night with you and Hardison." 

"That was a good night," he says, remembering all three of them staring at the stars, drunk on good wine and a big win and each other's company. 

"Yeah," she yawns. She pats his chest. "And now you have your restaurant, finally. Gastropub. Whatever you said." 

"That was it," he says, frowning, "but it's not really mine, it's Hardison's. I just do all the work." 

She lifts her head and stares up at him for a long minute. "I don't think so," she says finally, and puts her head back down, and Hardison comes back before he can ask her what that was about. 

"We got a new job?" Eliot asks, and Hardison nods. 

"Yeah," he says. "In D.C., I think. Gymnastics or something. I've gotta pull some stuff together tonight, we're meeting tomorrow." 

"Good," says Parker. She yawns again. "I need some sleep before we do a job." 

"You want to tell us about your trip of liking things first?" Hardison asks, and even though he sits down on the couch, on the other side of Parker, she stays right where she is, just shifts around, turning her back against Eliot's side and stretching her legs out so her feet are in Hardison's lap. Eliot isn't really sure what to do with his arm, so he slings it over the back of the couch, only to have Parker huff at him and reach up, grab his arm, and tuck it carefully around her waist. Eliot looks at Hardison, but Hardison just grins at both of them. 

"Okay," Parker says. She pulls out that notebook she keeps, the one where she writes down all of her observations of people's behavior. She flips through a lot of pages. "I separated it all out by categories. Food. Statues. Paintings. Chocolate--" 

Eliot looks down at her. "Chocolate isn't food?" 

"Chocolate is more than food," Parker says, like this is the one great law of the universe. Parker does not believe in God or gravity or the laws of physics, but chocolate, well, that's another matter entirely. She leans back a little so she can peer up at him. "You know food. Do you really not know that?" 

"Must have missed that lesson," Eliot tells her, raising an eyebrow. "I'll have to call Toby." 

"Ask him about the steak foam idea while you're at it," Hardison suggests, grinning when Eliot scowls at him. "That idea's got legs." 

"That idea is crap," Eliot says. "Parker, tell us about your trip, already, before I go looking for that laser Hardison bought and it has a little accident." 

Hardison clutches his pearls about that for a second, but then Parker starts in on her many lists of things she saw, and they both fall silent and listen. She tells them about food. She tells them about paintings, and sculptures, and statues. She talks about things she likes, things she felt about them, and a lot of it is happy or funny or sweet, but some of it really, really isn't, because like life and like artists, art ain't always happy. So maybe nobody could blame either him or Hardison if by the end of all of that, they're all a little closer together on the couch than they were. Parker's still snuggled up against Eliot's side, but Hardison has slid over more towards Eliot, and now instead of just Parker's feet in Hardison's lap her legs are slung over his, too, and he's close enough to Eliot that now, with his arm stretched out on the back of the couch, his fingertips are brushing Eliot's shoulder, and it's a lot of togetherness, really, but Eliot's not leaning away, is the thing.

Because it's comfortable. It's always comfortable. They fit, nice and neat, all together. Sometimes lately he thinks they're trying to tell him something, and he should probably just rip off the old bandaid and ask, but he hasn't. He's not gonna be the one to bring it up, because he could be wrong, and that would mess up the team for a minute, and he won't do that. And he's also not gonna be the one to bring it up because it's not his relationship to invite himself into, and if they want something out of him that's different than breakfast and movie night and kissing him on the cheek because they like his fancy bacon, they can damn well say so, and if they don't, well, that's fine too. It's not like he's going anywhere. The reason he hasn't moved out of this apartment is the same reason he knew to put bone marrow in his salsa verde: some things just go together. Celery and onion and carrot. Garlic and ginger and oil. Flour and butter and milk. Parker and Hardison and Eliot. There may have been a time when he tried to fight that, but he hasn't for a while. 

Parker seems to be dozing off now and Hardison's messing with something on his phone and Eliot is glad they're not looking at him, because he knows that right now he's probably all soft and see-through, like an onion that's been sautéed. He doesn't know how they did it, but if you want to soften up an onion you apply heat to it, so maybe that's their secret. Maybe it's been all the damn snuggling, warming him up, softening the parts of him that can still be soft. There's been a fair amount of that shit, over the years. Sharing a bed in that random town, the first year they were a crew. San Lorenzo. Alaska. Hardison's apartment in Boston, after he almost died. This, and all the times like it, the comfortable familiarity of one or both of them pulling him close, warm and soft. 

He didn't really think he could afford to be either of those things again, would probably have sworn up and down that anything like it would just be a liability. But the reality is that they moved out here to Portland, he moved in here with them and never left, and this shit keeps happening, but it's never been a liability. As a team, he thinks, the three of them got even better. Maybe he's a little soft for them, but it doesn't mean he worries about them any more or any less when they're on a job, and why should he? He feels the same way he always has, cares about them the same, trusts them the same, with an unshakable faith in Hardison's technical genius, Parker's total defiance of gravity, and the strength of his own hands. 

Maybe he should say something about whatever this is after all. But Parker's half asleep at this point, curled up against him, and he can't just say it to one of them, they've all got to be awake and talking and probably not jet-lagged. So he lets it go, for now. 

Hardison looks at Parker, watches her fall more fully asleep against Eliot, then smiles at him when he meets Eliot's eyes. "Thanks for talking to her about this stuff," he says. "I think she tried to talk to me and I just wasn't paying attention, but even if I had been, I don't know if I could have helped." 

"I didn't do a whole lot. Just made her an omelette," Eliot shrugs. "And a couple other things." 

Hardison shakes his head. "If you say so," he says. He picks up his discarded video game controller and looks at the screen, but then looks back at Eliot instead. "I'm really glad you stayed. We both are." 

"Yeah," Eliot says. He clears his throat. "I mean, I looked at a couple of places, but it was gonna take 'em six months to do the kitchen renovations I wanted, so..." He shrugs, trying to sell the bit. 

Hardison just gives him a sly smile. "I _did_ put a lot of work into that space. You know, just in case we ever have to move again. No other reason. Kitchens and bathrooms, man, that's what sells houses." 

"Look at Mister Real Estate over here," Eliot grumbles. "You think we're leaving again any time soon?" 

A weird look flits across Hardison's face, just for a second, but then he shakes his head. "I hope not. I put a ton of work into this building, I hope we're here for a couple of years, at least." 

"Right," Eliot says. And that should be fine. He takes life as it comes, mostly, doesn't have a lot of concrete long term plans and hasn't for a while. It's sort of an occupational hazard of the job he does; can't really put down roots anywhere. But now he's sitting here wondering what will happen if they do have to fly this particular coop, and he realizes with a start that he will miss this, that some part of him must have started looking forward to being-- settled, whatever, here, like this, for a long, long time. Huh. 

Hardison nudges his shoulder with his fingertips. "You okay?" 

"Yeah," he says slowly, nodding. "I guess I kinda like it here. Sort of took me by surprise. Didn't think it would really be my thing." 

He isn't really sure if he's talking about Portland anymore, and maybe Hardison doesn't think so either, because he looks right at Eliot, very seriously, grips his shoulder briefly, and says, "Yeah, well, if we ever have to leave, you've always got a place with us. If you want it." 

Eliot looks at Parker sleeping next to him and then back over at Hardison. "What exactly does that mean?" 

"Whatever you want it to mean," Hardison says. He points at the other video game control that's sitting by Eliot's leg. "For now, it means I'm gonna kick your ass at this game again, though." 

"I don't want to wake her up," Eliot frowns, because one of his arms is still around Parker, and he'll break a lot of other people's laws, but the one he has for himself about not waking Parker up if she's fallen asleep on him ain't one of them. 

"I'm fine," she says, without opening her eyes. "Enjoy driving fake cars. And living with us." She yawns and pats at him again. "That's another thing I like." 

"Yeah," he says, and picks up the controller. "Okay." 

Hardison does, in fact, kick his ass again. In his defense, he's a little distracted.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Giving my wife leiascully all the credit for the sautéed onion thing, blatantly stole that from her while we were talking about my fic!!


	6. welcome home

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Eliot finds his way home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1\. Hey, so, big apologies for taking so long with this last chapter? Like, this was done, and then. I started editing it, had a meltdown, bon appetit? 
> 
> 2\. Big thank you to my wife leiascully without whom this would still be sitting in drafts while I cried about it. Also big thanks to everybody on tumblr who put up with me whining excessively about writing this last chapter, especially darkfinch. <333 
> 
> 3\. Assume for the purposes of this fanfic that Low Low Price comes before Rundown, as all good timelines should.

Eliot has about twenty-four blissful hours where he thinks maybe Portland's it, this is where they've landed, and if there's a place for him here then maybe he's ready to settle into it. When they get back from this job, he decides, he's gonna make them dinner, and they're gonna talk about it. 

But then they go to D.C., and the job's weird. Nate gives him some kind of puzzle in the form of a legislator and instead of just telling Eliot what to do, running the thing, doing his damn job, Nate has him fly solo. Nate has all of them chasing rabbits, it seems like: Hardison's off learning appropriations law and Sophie's stressing over corn subsidies and Parker's barking orders at teenagers, and meanwhile he's sweating bullets over an un-connable U.S. Congressman who he just cannot seem to crack. He's good and stuck, with this guy. He's stuck, and he can't even talk to his people about how not to be stuck, because Parker and Hardison have their own shit to deal with, and when did he start thinking of them as his, exactly? He can't be doing that.

It would be nice to talk to them, though. Just to see if whatever this thing is stays the same once they leave Portland, or if it's just a weird byproduct of inhabiting the same living space. Maybe it doesn't. Maybe it's just the city, and the brewpub, and the feeling of being sort of settled. He doesn't really think so, but it would be nice to know, before he opens his big mouth about it and maybe makes a big mistake. And if nothing else, maybe they have some ideas about how to deal with this damn Congressman. 

But they're busy and so is he, stalking the halls of Congress, stuck, frustrated, and dealing with Nate, who won't say a fucking word to help. Just keeps giving him that same knowing smile, like he's sitting on a full house when he knows full well that Eliot's bluffing his way through on a pair of twos. And yeah, he cracks the code, eventually, sort of, but it doesn't really feel like it, even when Nate tells him he did good. He should not feel so goddamn warm about Nate telling him that he did good, but he does, at least until Nate walks off and he thinks, okay, Nate's up to something. 

Nate is up to something, and Eliot isn't wild about that for any number of reasons. When Nate is up to something, buildings get blown up. When Nate is up to something, Eliot has to confess to his team, his family, that once upon a time he worked for the literal devil, and pray to a God that he does not think takes his calls anymore that they won't kick him to the curb for the things he's done. When Nate is up to something, Eliot has to break his longstanding vow not to fuck with firearms, which means he carries the weight of killing twenty guys in a warehouse along with the weight of everything else he's done. When Nate is up to something, they have to move cities in the middle of the night because Interpol set up a hot dog stand across the street, and okay, that last one hasn't broken nearly as bad as it could have as far as Eliot is concerned, but fuck, this shit gets old after a while. 

"If you knew what he was up to," Eliot says quietly, sliding in next to Sophie as they walk through Reagan National towards security, "you'd tell us. Right?" 

"Yes," she says, "which, I imagine, is why I don't know anything." 

"You gonna ask?" Eliot murmurs, but Sophie doesn't answer, just pretends that a handbag in one of the stores that lines the walkway has caught her eye. He knows she's pretending, because nothing in Reagan National is fancy enough to catch Sophie's eye, and he figures her silence is answer enough. Whatever Nate's up to, Eliot will have to puzzle it out alone. 

He won't talk to Hardison or Parker, doesn't want to worry them until he has something more to go on than _Nate's being weird_. So he's gonna have to just sit on it for a while. And he should probably sit on this weird trying-to-be-a-relationship thing, too, because whatever Nate is doing, fucking around with whatever's going on with the three of them at the same time seems like a bad fucking idea. Sure, their team is solid. He knows that. In their current form, they can weather whatever storm blows up. But that's not accounting for what happens if he goes home and looks at them and says what he wants to say, because even if it's for the better, that'll change things. And if Nate's moving them all around like pieces on his chessboard of a brain, well, Eliot's going to wait to see where they land before he fucks with their rotation, because that's what keeps everybody safe. And that's his job, to keep them safe. That has to come first. It comes before what he wants. Always has, always will. 

Even so, he sits next to them on the flight back to Portland, and he doesn't push Parker away when she falls asleep with her head on his shoulder, and he smiles back at Hardison when he looks at the two of them and grins. Hardison yawns and drifts off not long after, leaving Eliot awake by himself to think about all the other times they've just closed their eyes and let sleep find them, trusting that they were safe with him there. Maybe this thing does travel with them. Maybe it always has. 

That's good to know, but he can want whatever he wants. Still doesn't make it a good idea to try and have it. 

And then Parker tears her ACL, and everything sort of goes to shit for a minute, anyway. He's not there when it happens, he's in the brewpub's kitchen, but he drops everything-- literally, a bowl full of marinade, right into the sink-- when Hardison tears in like a bat outta hell, wild-eyed and worried, and says they need to go to the hospital, _like, right now_. 

Eliot doesn't outwardly panic any more than dropping the bowl in the sink, but that's only because Hardison's standing here, which tells him that whatever's wrong, nobody's dead or close to it. 

"Parker?" Eliot asks, and Hardison nods.

"She was testing a new rig, something snapped, she landed on her feet but she stepped kinda funny, and I think she really hurt her knee," Hardison tells him. He takes a deep breath. "Sorry. I just. I saw her fall, Eliot. I've never seen her fall before." 

Eliot reaches out and squeezes Hardison's shoulder, just once, and then follows him back behind the building, where Parker sits on the ground against the bricks, harness half on, grimacing a lot, with one of her rigs dangling behind her. 

"It's a sprain," Parker insists, when Eliot leans over her to get a closer look at her knee while Hardison worries loudly behind them. Eliot raises an eyebrow at her. She folds her arms over her chest and groans a little when he gently touches her leg. She frowns up at him, partly out of pain but also out of spite, and he figures she's gonna be okay. "I sprained my knee. That's all. I already told Hardison, I can walk it off, I just need a minute." 

"What you need," he says, frowning right back at her, "is a brace and something to bring the swelling down, and for someone to look at that knee and make sure you don't need surgery. That's a torn ACL." 

"How do you know--" Hardison says, and then shakes his head. "You know what, no. I don't want to hear that it's a very distinctive injury." 

"Okay," Eliot says, shrugging, "but it kinda is." He looks back at Parker. "Did it sort of-- _pop_ , when you touched down?" 

Parker bites her lip and nods. "Yeah." 

"Yeah," Eliot says back. He looks over at Hardison. "I'm gonna go get my car. Actually," he says, as Parker tries to move her leg and groans again, "I'm gonna go get your car. More room." 

At the hospital, Eliot drops them off at the ER entrance and goes to find parking. "I'll call Nate," he tells them, and Parker glares at him, but he shrugs it off. "He's gotta know." 

"Fine," she snaps, one of her fists balled up in Hardison's shirt as she balances on one leg.

He calls Nate. Nate tells Sophie. Sophie is concerned but glad it wasn't worse; Nate wants more information when they have it. Eliot promises an update when he's got one and hangs up, then just sits in the car for a second, tapping his fingers on the steering wheel. He's not a huge fan of hospitals, does his best to avoid needing to go to one. If it's just for a job it's fine, they've done plenty of those over the years, but he's not wild about them otherwise. Feels too much like a step away from prison, for one thing. For another, there's always people here who shouldn't be, like that kid a couple years ago in Boston. Randy, that was his name. That kid should have been running around, causing trouble with friends, happy and free, not scared and sad and sitting in an emergency room with another broken arm because he had the bad fucking luck to have an abusive piece of shit for a father. And there's always people like that in places like this, and Eliot always notices, and there's only so many heads he can break in a day. 

So maybe he's a little cagey, sitting next to Hardison while Parker sulks on the emergency room bed they made her sit on. It doesn't get any better when the nurse gives him a skeptical look when she comes in, and he knows she's just doing her job, assessing what he's doing here and if this is a Bad Situation for Parker, but it still sucks, because it reminds him why he hates hospitals. 

"Didn't see you here before," the nurse says, checking Parker's blood pressure. 

"He's Eliot," Parker says, clearly irritated with the blood pressure cuff as it starts to puff up. She looks from it to the nurse and back and Eliot thinks she's maybe half a second away from clocking the nurse.

"That's me," he confirms, wondering which of their many cover stories they've gone with, and how long it will be until they give him a fucking clue so he doesn't fuck it up. Hardison should have texted him, but he was probably too worried to deal. 

"Does that have to be so tight?" Parker demands, and Eliot watches her fist clench. 

"Baby," Hardison says, because he has apparently also noticed that Parker's fingers are opening and closing like she's trying to grip a taser that she doesn't have, "she's just doing her job." 

"Is her job torturing people?" Parker asks. The nurse smiles and writes something on a clipboard. 

"Why, are you in the market for a new gig?" Eliot says, and Parker makes a face at him, and he makes a face back, and the nurse looks at both of them and then at Hardison and smiles. 

"Ah," says the nurse, to Eliot. "You must be the brother." 

"Yep, this is my sister," Eliot manages to say, nearly choking on the word, because he'd forgotten that particular alias set-up existed, and of all the ones they could have picked, why did it have to be that one, now? The nurse turns her back to put the blood pressure equipment away, and Eliot glares at Hardison for not clueing him in a little sooner, and Hardison just gestures wildly between him and Parker like _hey, man, I didn't know what else to say_.

And Eliot knows that Hardison weaves a bunch of their random identities together like this, a complicated web of people whose aliases are all somehow related to each other, in case things go all the way sideways and they need to be someplace like this. It's Hardison's way of caring about them, Eliot knows, making up all these little stories about the lives they don't lead, planning for injuries that everyone hopes aren't inevitable. It's Hardison's way of coping, too, giving them a safety net. A soft place to land, so they know that even if they wind up unconscious in a hospital somewhere, somebody on their team is always looking out for them. So they know they're not alone. They'll never be alone. 

And that's all this is, too, just a story that tells this nurse that Eliot belongs here, belongs to these people, in a way that is safe and okay, but it's still a little weird, after everything that's been going on, to sit here and be Parker's brother for a couple of hours. There was maybe a time when that's a role he could have filled, but it hasn't been that way for a long time, if it really ever was. 

After some waiting and some x-rays and more waiting, it turns out Parker's a little lucky after all, and she doesn't need surgery. She gets sent home with a big old leg brace, some pain pills, and an order to rest for six weeks, and Eliot just drives them all home in Hardison's perfectly reasonable sedan and listens to Hardison fuss over her while she complains about her _knee sprain_ and he tries not to feel weird about a cover story that was just that, a story. 

"Sorry about the cover," Hardison says to him later, once they get Parker situated in bed with her leg propped up. "I was gonna do the one where y'all are married and I'm your lawyer and we were all playing tennis and that nurse asked if she was my girlfriend and I just kinda panicked." 

"Hardison," Eliot says levelly, "that is the worst cover story, and she _is_ your girlfriend." 

"Yeah," he says. "But I didn't want you to feel...left out, I guess." 

"Left out of what?" Eliot grumbles. "I'm not part of your relationship." 

"Right," Hardison says, and he sounds a little skeptical about that, but Eliot doesn't call him on it, because he can't possibly talk about that today.

It's not that he doesn't think they want him to be here. Hardison said it, out loud. Parker sorta said it, too, in her own Parker way of saying things. But over the next couple of days he watches Hardison take care of her, calm and patient and loving and tender, and he thinks: that's something good. Just like it is. It works. No reason to put another person in the middle of it. Maybe they left the window open for him for a while, but between Nate being weird and now this whole thing, maybe the window's closing. 

He still makes them breakfast every morning, though. He still cares about them, he always will. So he makes them good food and plates it up nice. Parker doesn't kiss him on the cheek, because Hardison brings her a tray so she'll stay in bed. 

"You could take it, too, you know," Hardison says, one morning about a week into Parker's recovery time, as Eliot slides a tray toward him across the kitchen island, nicely arranged with warm pancakes and freshly squeezed orange juice and coffee and The Bacon. "She could probably use a break from me. She said I worry too much." 

Eliot shakes his head. "Nah, you go on. I gotta make the rest of these pancakes while the griddle's hot." 

Hardison frowns a little, looks like he's gonna say something Eliot doesn't want to hear, so Eliot adds, "Those pancakes won't stay warm forever," and Hardison's still frowning, but he says, "All right," and heads off towards their bedroom.

Eliot thinks about the whole situation a lot, while Parker's healing up. He cooks about it some. Not just breakfast, but a series of increasingly elaborate dinners that gives him space and time to sort shit out without having to talk to anybody, because nobody bothers him while he's cooking. Tonight it's butternut squash gnocchi and an oxtail ragù, and for dessert he's making blood orange crème brûlée, because he didn't have enough to do to keep his brain and hands busy. This is good, though. Lots of steps. Lots of tending to various things that aren't the two people he loves and lives with, except that the food is all for them, so it isn't exactly not tending to them. At least it's less direct. Whatever. He'll take it.

The meat goes in first, a nice long slow roast that gives him hours to plan everything else. He roasts squash, too; he peels and quarters potatoes. He separates eggs, yolks and whites neatly set apart in their little ramekins. He checks on the meat every once in a while, wondering if he, like this ragù, has been slowly turning into something soft and sweet, and what he's going to do with himself when he's done. The ragù has an easy life. It's going to sit here until it's ready, and then it's going to get ladled over some gnocchi. Its creation takes time, but its purpose is simple. Easy. And Eliot has not, on the whole, had an easy life, but now he seems to be standing real close to one-- or at least, close to one that makes sense for who he is-- and it isn't that he doesn't want it. After the last couple of weeks, it isn't that he doesn't think they're into it, too. He just doesn't know if it's a good idea for everybody involved, and that idea has to simmer for a while yet. It's not cooked. 

Honestly the whole thing isn't that different from the oxtails and the ragù. Things are done when they're done and not a minute sooner. There's a lot of variables and they all matter. How much you've got of whatever you're cooking. The shape of it, the cuts, the texture. The kind of heat you're using, how consistent that heat is. Little variables like that make it different every time. You don't step in the same river twice, and you don't make the same ragù, either. All times are approximate. You can estimate how long it'll be until dinner but in the end it's just your best guess. It's done when it's done. 

Every day lately he feels like he's been slow cooking something in the slowest possible way, looking at his watch and checking the temperature and asking himself, "Are you ready yet?" 

Hardison and Parker might be, but Eliot just isn't. What they have works. And what they might have might work, too, but then again, it might not. He is an unknown variable. Things that go together one way aren't great in others. Or maybe everything goes together fine, but you go adding extra stuff and everything can get unbalanced and weird. It's like this ragù. Right now, as he tastes it, it's the right combination of sweetness, acidity, salt. It's perfect, as is. But an extra onion, or more wine, or a little more fat on the meat, and suddenly what worked great together is too sugary, too bright, too much. Eliot doesn't want to be too much. Doesn't want to unbalance the team. Especially not now, not when Nate's doing something weird. Not when the something weird, more than likely, is that Nate's leaving, because he gets this look in his eye sometimes like he's already on a boat somewhere else with Sophie. That's enough of an identity crisis for their crew to deal with. Maybe what they are now is fine. Maybe that's enough. Maybe it doesn't have to change. 

Hardison pokes his head into the kitchen, then, looking like he drifted in here on the aroma of this ragù alone, and like he's been reading Eliot's mind, he says, "Is that ready yet?" 

And Eliot manages a smile, stirs the sauce, and says, "You know, I think it needs a while longer." 

The ragù is ready eventually, at least. Eliot, well, he'll be done when he's done.

He does bring Parker her breakfast the next morning, because Nate calls Hardison about a job and a few minutes later, Eliot hears the door that leads downstairs to their office open and shut, and he figures Hardison's going to be working for a while. He brings Hardison a plate first, because breakfast is biscuits and gravy and it's better hot, and Hardison just smiles gratefully and then points in the direction of the apartment and back at the food, and Eliot just nods and says, "I got her," and he does. 

Parker's already got the television on when he comes in, some reality show blaring away. She looks a little surprised to see him, but she doesn't say anything about it. 

"Okay," he says, setting the tray down, "It's breakfast. Biscuits and sausage gravy. It isn't packed full of sugar, but I think you'll like it anyway. The biscuits are my grandma's recipe, and she got it from her mama and on and on, so, if you don't like 'em, well, I can't help you." 

She nods and shifts around a little, staring at the food. She picks up her fork, but she doesn't say anything, and she doesn't take a bite, she just looks at him like she's waiting for something. 

"Uh, Hardison's on the phone," he explains, gesturing over his shoulder. "Nate called, looks like he may be a while getting back up here. Anything I can get you?" 

Parker sighs and shakes her head, and okay, he thinks, that's enough of this. 

"Cat got your tongue?" he asks finally, because he's not real sure what the silent treatment is for, and he's definitely not enjoying it. 

Parker grabs the remote and mutes the sound on the tv, then crosses her arms over her chest. "I know you're mad because I messed up and I let the team down, and I wish you would just say that, instead of hiding in the kitchen all the time," she says. 

"What?" 

She points at her leg. "This. I know you think I made a mistake." 

"I don't-- what gave you that impression?" 

"I've been in here for ten years!" she declares. "You don't even come say hello!" 

"You need your rest," he says, shifting around a little. "I look in on you sometimes, but you're usually asleep, which is good." 

"I still need to eat," she says. "You could bring my food in here. But you just make Hardison do it." 

"Hold on a minute, I don't make Hardison do a damn thing. He wants to. He's your boyfriend, Parker. When people are together they take care of each other," he growls, very aware that he takes care of them a lot and he is not their boyfriend, but he's hoping that Parker's pain pills will keep her from making that observation, because he is not cooked yet. 

"Fine, but he doesn't do the food right," Parker sighs. 

"All he has to do is bring it in here so you can eat it," Eliot says, frowning. "What is he doing wrong?" 

"He doesn't tell me about it," she says. "You tell us what you make." 

"I've been sending a lot of pancakes in here," Eliot points out. "I don't think those need to be described, at this point." 

"Yes they do!" she says. She waves her hands at the biscuits. "Hardison wouldn't know your grandmother made biscuits like this. _You_ know that. You're the one who said food is feelings and you don't come tell me about it, so..." 

"Okay, okay," he relents, holding up his hands. He tells himself that he doesn't really get whatever's upsetting her, but the truth is that it just kinda sounds like she missed him, and that's a lot, and he's not thinking about that right now. Instead, he sits very carefully on the edge of the bed, slow and gentle so he doesn't upset her leg or her breakfast tray, then points at her plate and clears his throat. "My granny made these every Saturday. She lived two streets over from us, so I used to run over and help her make gravy while she did the biscuits." 

Parker listens; she eats her breakfast. Eliot tells her about his grandmother, and how he watched her make biscuits on Saturday mornings, frying up sausage and making gravy when he was still so small he needed to stand on a chair to reach the stove. She smiles a little at that. 

"What," he says, fake scowling. "Did you think I was born looking like this?" 

"Maybe," she smiles. "These are really good, by the way." 

"Better now that I told you about 'em?" 

"Yeah," she says. "You're really not upset? About my knee." 

"Parker," he says, "in our line of work, we all take a lot of risks. Everybody's risks look a little different, because we all have different jobs, but they're always there. Usually it works out, because all of us know what we're doing, and we know what risks are okay to take. You are the expert on all of your harnesses and rigging systems and whatever. Every time you use one it's a risk, but I don't worry about you, because I know you know your stuff. But a risk's a risk. Sometimes it pays off, sometimes it doesn't. This one didn't. But I'm not mad. It's just the job." 

"Oh," she says. "Okay." 

"Anyway, sorry I haven't been around," he tells her. "I'll do better at that." 

"Good," she says. 

She smiles at him and he smiles back and he wishes, like yesterday's ragù, that he was done, but he isn't, because this, too, is a risk, and he doesn't know if it'll pay off, or if it'll be a disaster. 

But he stays in here for a while. Longer than a while, probably. She makes him watch maybe a thousand rerun episodes of some garbage reality show called _Beauty and the Geek_ , which he makes a lot of noise about hating and would never admit in a million years that he enjoyed at all, but when Hardison comes in during the season finale and tries to talk to them, both of them shush him simultaneously. 

"It's the finale!" Parker declares. "Stop talking!" 

"This is unexpected," Hardison says, clearly amused.

"Look, I've spent too much damn time watching this not to know who wins," Eliot grumbles. 

"It's gonna be Jasmine and David," Parker insists. 

"The guy who pretends to be a Knight of the Round Table on the weekends?" Eliot says. "No way." 

"A LARPer?" Hardison asks, and Eliot groans. 

"Of course you know what that is," he says. 

"I'm right and you know it," Parker tells him. She throws a piece of popcorn at him. "If I'm right you have to make pancakes for dinner. And the bacon." 

"Deal," Eliot says. 

"Uh huh," Hardison says, grinning. "I'll just leave y'all to that, then." 

For a person with a torn ACL, Parker manages to gloat a lot over her dinner of pancakes and bacon, when he brings it to her. 

And Eliot does bring Parker meals more often, after that. He makes sure he tells her about everything that's on the plate, and when they leave for a job in Japan, he leaves Amy a note to do the same thing. 

He shouldn't have made his granny's biscuits and gravy, though. It just made him think of home, of places he can't go back to, places he doesn't belong anymore, a life he never really wanted but still sometimes feels like he should have had anyway. Which is probably why, after they get back from Japan and Parker's knee is back to supporting her crazy acrobatics, he goes and finds them a job saving a little town that reminds him of where he came from.

Everything about it-- the town, the old man, the lady and her grocery store-- really gets under his skin in a way that nothing has for a long time. It's bad enough that he talks to Hardison about it, just him and Hardison and Lucille. And even after everything they've been through he's a little sure that Hardison won't understand, because he still talks to his Nana, like, a couple times a month, and here Eliot is a decade later and still avoiding his own goddamn father. But when he looks away from the display screen over at Hardison, there's no judgment there, or pity, just-- patience. Care. Maybe a little concern. And something that looks a whole lot like love, a whole lot like the way he looked at Parker when she was out with her leg, and all of a sudden all of this is just overwhelming. He's like a pot boiling over, all this self-contained feeling threatening to spill everywhere, and this is too much, he is not ready for this, he may never be ready for this, not for people who know him for exactly who is he and love him anyway, and especially not for people who know him for who is he and love him _because of that_. He turns up the volume on the bug again, and Hardison and his big heart just let him be. 

It doesn't help that the job is damn hard. They've brought down some of the world's worst people but they can't undo the basic, mundane kind of evil that convinces people to sell their neighbors down the river for the guarantee of a shitty minimum wage job and a television set priced at $99.99. There ain't nothing he can do about that. Not about that, or the fact that, when it was him faced with the choice of staying in his own little town and trying to fix it or getting the hell out, he picked what was behind door number two, and there's no going back on that now. 

But they get the job done, and this town, at least, is gonna be fine. Businesses won't close. People won't leave because they don't see a future here. They walk down the street, Eliot trailing behind Parker and Hardison, looking at everything they helped save, and at the end of the street is Tabitha standing outside her grocery store. And he looks at her, and he sees the life he thought he'd have, a long time ago. A wife. Kids. A house. A dog. Hands stained with nothing but engine grease and Oklahoma red dirt instead of other people's blood. And he loves Parker and Hardison so much that it hurts and they all fit together just fine but they aren't any of that life, won't ever be anything close to that life, and anyway they already have each other. But this lady-- she's somebody like what he could have had, and she doesn't know him like they do, just knows that he's a decent guy who does questionable shit to help people, so maybe, just maybe, he can have the life he's lived but have the one he left behind, too. 

So he asks her out. 

That's the easy part. The hard part is everything after, because he's going home, and he has this date, and he has to talk to Parker and Hardison, he has to try and explain. 

"I'm, uh, going out of town for a few days," he tells them. "I made you a thing for breakfast and left you some notes about it. All you have to do is reheat it." 

"Is everything okay?" Parker asks. He's pretty sure if he says no she'll unearth a taser and follow him all the way to Oklahoma, so he holds up his hands until her expression softens a little. 

"Yeah," he says. "Everything's fine. I'm just-- I'm going home." 

"Oh, damn," Hardison says. He nods, raises one hand like he wants to reach out, and then thinks better of it and lets it drop. "For how long?" 

"A couple of days," Eliot shrugs. He takes a breath. "I gotta be back by Saturday. I uh, I asked that lady out. Tabitha. From the last job." 

"Oh, hey, wow," Hardison says. He looks a little surprised and a lot disappointed, and Parker does too, and Eliot feels like shit about that, but he can't take back what he said now. They're not anything more than they are. They can't hold that against him forever. They won't.

"Didn't we--" Parker starts to say, frowning, looking at Hardison. He takes her hand, and she looks away from Eliot. 

"Good luck, man," Hardison says. "She was cute. Gonna miss your cooking, if that works out for you." 

"Hardison, It's just a date," Eliot says. He doesn't know who he's trying to convince, them, or himself. "I'm not moving out." 

"Yeah," Hardison says. "Well, call us if you need anything." 

As it turns out, there's plenty he needs. Comfort, sure. Reassurance, maybe. Somebody to tell him that he's not actually a piece of shit for abandoning his family and never once trying to mend fences that will probably never be repaired. And they would, is the thing. They'd pick up if he called. Hardison would sit there and listen and make that face like he made in the van, not judging, just listening, and _caring_ , loudly, even though he isn't saying a word. Parker would find a taser from somewhere and brandish it in front of the camera and start asking questions about security systems, which for his dad's house is just an angry old man and a 12 gauge. And he'd probably feel better, if he called them, is the other thing, because he thinks they love him and he knows he loves them, but if he's trying to turn the heat down on this not-really-a-thing that's simmering between them all, well, he can't very well keep reaching for them and pulling them close, can he. 

So he doesn't call. He just sits in this big-ass truck outside of his dad's house for half an hour before driving straight back to a hotel in OKC, grabbing a six pack from the store in the hotel lobby, and heading for his room to drink it. He hacks all his hair off in the bathroom after beer number five. He's not even drunk, he just doesn't want to wake up in the morning with the same face looking at him in the mirror and this seems like the easiest way to change it. He flies out the next day, lucks into a row by himself. He sits on the aisle, out of habit and a need for easier exit strategies. The window shade is up and the skies are clear and when they take off he can see everything down below that used to be home, and he doesn't waste a second reaching over and pulling the shade all the way down. 

So Eliot comes back from Oklahoma on Saturday afternoon with a new haircut and a side of heartbreak to go with it, but he doesn't go back to the apartment, and he doesn't go on that date. He calls and leaves a message and says he's sorry that he can't make it, something came up, whatever generic excuse he can summon that isn't the truth, because the truth is, he is just not that guy anymore. Maybe he never was that guy, the guy who could have a wife and a couple of kids and a dog and a good life in a small town with good people, because he lived his whole young life with one foot out of a town like that and never saw a real future in it, and maybe he always meant to go back, but he didn't. And the second somebody handed him a gun and gave him an order and he followed it, that sweet domestic kind of life was never going to be an option for him again. But Tabitha, well, she did what he couldn't. She stayed in her town and she ran her daddy's business and she fought like hell to keep the lights on, and he admires the hell out of her for it, but he just cannot relate. That is not what Eliot Spencer did, when it was his choice. He ran. Maybe he's still running.

He just drives. East, west, south, north, wherever. Drives to the coast out at Rockaway, thinking maybe watching the water will calm him down, clear his head, help him find a way out of this mess and back to sanity, back to some time when the people he lives with were just his crew and he didn't have to spend any time at all worrying that he wanted something that would bring everything they've built crashing down at his feet. But then he gets to the beach and he looks at the sand and the tides and despite the differences of this rocky coastline, he just sees San Lorenzo and thinks of a warm celebratory night drinking wine, and he won't find the answers he wants here, so he gets back in the car. 

If the ocean's out, he'll go to the mountains, and it's not like those are hard to find. There's a big-ass volcano on the other side of Portland, for one thing. He goes there instead. But as he's driving on this little state highway around white-capped Mount Hood, all he can think about is trudging up and down in the snow on Mount Kibari, spending the night in that tent keeping two people he loves from being cold, then waking up warm and soft with a thing for both of them that he has yet to resolve, and at that point, he just pulls off the road at some random campsite and gets out of the car and stomps around and swears a lot, because not only can he not be with them, he apparently also can't be without them. Wherever he goes, they come with him, even if they're still in Portland and he's somewhere else. 

The sun's been down for a while before he starts driving again. There's a little ski town off the highway with a couple of bars and places that are open late and look like they serve exactly the kind of greasy comfort food he needs, so he spends a couple of hours at one of those fine establishments. The waitress flirts with him a lot and he flirts back and for a couple of hours, at least, he forgets that he's having some kind of goddamn emotional crisis. Except he doesn't, not really, because the whole time he's in here he's just thinking about the brewpub. And then he stops for gas on his way out of town and goes in to grab some coffee for himself and reflexively buys a bottle of orange soda and one of those mini-snack boxes of cereal and gets back in his car, sets them on the seat, and says, "Goddammit." 

He drives some more, the soda and the cereal in the seat beside him because he can't bring himself to throw them away. Around one in the morning he has this wild idea that he's just gonna take off, because maybe those four people in Portland are the only family he has but who's to say he won't lose them too? If the last twenty-four hours have reminded him of anything, it's that if there's one thing he knows about family, it's leaving it.

He can't go home again and he can't get back what he gave up when he left and if all he's good at is leaving then he _shouldn't_ have whatever weird not-thing he doesn't have with Parker and Hardison, so when he hits the interstate and gets back to town he ignores his exit and veers north. Where he's headed, he has no idea, he just knows it's the opposite direction of Portland, and that suits him fine. He's tried pretty much everything to put this behind him aside from literally putting it behind him, so if that's what's left to try, he'll try that. 

It's a solid plan, or it would be. It's just that he keeps turning the car around. 

He's gonna drive to Canada. That's plan number one. Just drive back to Portland, get on I-5, battle traffic around Seattle, and get out of town, head to Vancouver and whatever's beyond it. He's got some kind of spare passport in the glove compartment, it'll work out. Plus, there's some decent food in Vancouver, as he recalls, and wonders what's on some of those menus right now, and what Parker would think of hamachi tartare or seared squid. He gets a little lost in that, so much so that he's barely even crossed the Columbia before he finds, inexplicably, that he's going south instead of north, and he's almost back to the 405 and the exit he needs for the Pearl District and the brewpub and the apartment. Irritated, he shifts gears and blows past the exit. 

Okay. So plan number one didn't work out. No problem. Plan number two is...California? Fuck. Fine. He's already going south, so he'll just keep on going, all the way to California, get lost in a national forest or two. That'll be a lot better than wandering handcuffed through the woods outside Boston with Hardison, he thinks, not that that was too bad. It was actually kinda fun. It's been a while since they high fived for morale, he thinks, and somehow, before he knows it, instead of south, he's driving north, and coming up on the same exit from a totally different direction. 

What the hell happened to his sense of direction? Maybe he's been hit in the head too many times lately, because his internal compass seems to have reset permanently and the only place in the world it seems like he can navigate to is-- _home_. Huh. Home, where maybe he has left something cooking for far too long, and maybe he should get back to check on that, now that he's driven across the entire state of Oregon and back several times, when the clarity he was looking for was probably right here, in that building where he lives, all along.

"Shit," he says, and takes the exit for the Pearl District, which is home, but not because he lives in a building there. 

Still, he probably circles the block twenty more times. Maybe more. It's late, so late it's basically early, and he isn't counting. This is weird. This is weird, he should just park and go in, he lives there. They want him to live there. They told him that. They're fine. The team's fine. The team is solid. Probably even whatever weird shit Nate's up to is survivable. Jesus, is everyone fine but him? 

Maybe the only person he's really fighting is himself. Maybe that's why he keeps losing. Maybe he's just been punching himself in the face for the last couple of years. Maybe that's all he's been doing while he's been trying to avoid this, telling himself it was because Nate's being weird or it might fuck up the team or whatever, when really everybody else was fine and he was just putting himself through a lot of unnecessary pain. It isn't like he can't take it, he can, but he's not a big believer in suffering for the sake of suffering. He left all that behind when he left Moreau, and he's not going back to it. 

If home really is where the heart is he knows where his has been, for a long time now, and there's no leaving that. The cereal and the soda in the seat next to him make that pretty damn clear. 

It's nearly sunrise by the time he gets back to the apartment. He stands at his own front door for way too long, and his keys are right here in his hand but he knocks on the door like he's a guest at his own place, because he doesn't really know what he's about to ask them for, but he knows it's something big, and somehow it doesn't seem right just to let himself in. 

It's Hardison who opens the door, Parker a few steps behind him. It's so early that they're still dressed for bed. 

"Nice hair," Hardison yawns, and then frowns at the keys Eliot's holding. "Why didn't you just let yourself in? You okay?"

"No," he says, and that's the truth, because he's standing here looking at two people who are holding his heart in their hands, and maybe they know that, and maybe they don't, but either way it puts him off balance. "No, I'm fucking not okay." 

Parker comes to stand by Hardison, looking curiously at the keys and then his hair. "Was your date that bad?" 

"No," he says, shaking his head. "That didn't happen." 

"Sorry to hear that," Hardison says. He looks at Eliot like he's not really sure what he needs, but because it's Hardison, and it's him, he leads with a joke first. "Listen, I know you and your luck with the ladies is kind of legendary, but you strike out once and you're too depressed to open your own door? For shame, man." 

"Dammit, Hardison, it's not like that," Eliot sighs, and Hardison's face softens up immediately. 

"Not a good trip, huh?" Hardison asks quietly. 

"Yeah," Eliot says, crossing his arms over his chest. "Not so much, no." 

Hardison nods, looks at Parker, and back at Eliot, then gestures toward the living room. "I know this isn't really your thing, but if you want to talk about it--" 

"I don't," he interrupts. "I don't want to talk about that." 

Hardison starts to say something else, but Parker beats him to it. She looks sleepy, still, but not too tired not to look at him like he's a safe she's trying to crack. "Did you want to talk to us about something else?" she asks, like she already knows his combination, and it's him and it's Parker, so she probably does. 

"Maybe," he says again, and looks at her for a second, trying to find the words. "I just-- I was wrong, before, when I told you where I was going. I wasn't going home. I was already home." 

"Yeah," Hardison says, in that same soft tone that he uses sometimes with Parker. 

"Did you not know this was home?" Parker frowns. "You live here, Eliot." 

"I didn't mean the building, Parker," Eliot grumbles. He shifts his weight, back and forth, rocking on his feet a little, nervous as hell, because there's no way he can look at these people and say _you are my home_ without it sounding like exactly what it is, which is, _I love you_ with a side of _please, tell me I am home for you, too_. 

Parker and Hardison look at each other and smile a little, and they know, they have to know, but maybe some things aren't real unless you say them out loud, so Parker says, "What did you mean, then? What's home?" 

Inside his head, some kind of timer finally ticks down to zero, like all the warmth the two of them have shared over the years is finally done with him, letting him belong here, soft, and sweet, and ready, now.

"Wherever the two of you are," he says, "that's home, for me." 

"Right back at you, baby," Hardison says, without hesitation, and when Eliot doesn't grumble about being called somebody's baby, Hardison smiles at him like it's Christmas, or something, and Parker says, "Yeah," and smiles at him too, and she doesn't even bother to say anything about her money, so yeah, okay, it must be love. 

Parker moves before Hardison does, slipping her arms around Eliot and pulling him close, her chin digging into his shoulder. He expects Hardison to move in right behind her, but he steps around and wraps his arms around Eliot from behind instead, and it's like being back in those sleeping bags in Alaska, except this time he knows it's where he belongs. 

"Welcome home, by the way," Hardison says, and the rumble of his voice runs up and down Eliot's spine. "We're glad you're back." 

"Yeah. Don't leave again," Parker says, her breath tickling against his ear. 

"I'm home," he says, clearing his throat, which for some reason is a little choked up. "Nowhere else I need to be." 

The sun comes up not too long after, all three of them still standing together, holding on to each other, happy and whole and home, at least until Parker demands food, and they all head to the kitchen. He should probably be tired but he's really not, at all, just yet. So he makes them breakfast, stacks of the fluffiest lemon ricotta pancakes with a strawberry compote to go with them, all of it soft and warm and sweet, just like he feels. And this time, when they kiss him, it's not on the cheek.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey, thanks for reading all of my soft Eliot feelings! I just wanted a nice warm hug in story form tbh, that is all this story is trying to be. This story would make you hot chocolate if it could. So would I. <333


End file.
